Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War
Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War
Abraham Lincoln i/ˈeɪbrəhæm ˈlɪŋkən/ (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through its greatest constitutional, military, and moral crises—the American Civil War—preserving the Union, Sony SVS13AA11L Battery
abolishing slavery, strengthening the national government and modernizing the economy. Reared in a poor family on the western frontier, Lincoln was self-educated, and became a country lawyer, a Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator during the 1830s, and a one-term member of the United States House of Representatives during the 1840s. Sony SVS131A11L Battery
After a series of debates in 1858 that gave national visibility to his opposition to the expansion of slavery, Lincoln lost a Senate race to his arch-rival, Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln, a moderate from a swing state, secured the Republican Party presidential nomination in 1860. Sony SVS131B11L Battery
With almost no support in the South, Lincoln swept the North and was elected president in 1860. His election was the signal for seven southern slave states to declare their secession from the Union and form the Confederacy. Sony SVS151A11L Battery
Sony PCG-41414L BatteryThe departure of the Southerners gave Lincoln's party firm control of Congress, but no formula for compromise or reconciliation was found. Sony SVS151B11L Battery
Lincoln explained in his second inaugural address: "Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the Nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came."
When the North enthusiastically rallied behind the national flag after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, Lincoln concentrated on the military and political dimensions of the war effort. His goal was now to reunite the nation. Sony SVS151G1GL Battery
Sony PCG-41412L BatteryHe suspended habeas corpus, arresting and temporarily detaining thousands of suspected secessionists in the border states without trial. Lincoln averted British recognition of the Confederacy by defusing the Trent affair in late 1861. Sony PCG-4121DL Battery
His numerous complex moves toward ending slavery centered on the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, using the Army to protect escaped slaves, encouraging the border states to outlaw slavery, and helping push through Congress the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which permanently outlawed slavery. Sony PCG-4121EL Battery
Sony PCG-41411L Battery Lincoln closely supervised the war effort, especially the selection of top generals, including commanding general Ulysses S. Grant. Lincoln brought leaders of the major factions of his party into his cabinet and pressured them to cooperate. Sony PCG-4121FL Battery
Lincoln's Navy set up a naval blockade that shut down the South's normal trade, helped take control of Kentucky and Tennessee, gained control of the Southern river system using gunboats. He tried repeatedly to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia. Each time a general failed, Lincoln substituted another until finally Grant succeeded in 1865. Sony PCG-4121GL Battery
An exceptionally astute politician deeply involved with power issues in each state, Lincoln reached out to War Democrats and managed his own re-election in the 1864 presidential election. As the leader of the moderate faction of the Republican party, Lincoln found his policies and personality were "blasted from all sides": Sony PCG-41211L Battery
Sony PCG-41217L BatteryRadical Republicans demanded harsher treatment of the South, War Democrats desired more compromise, Copperheads despised him, and irreconcilable secessionists plotted his death.[1Sony PCG-41212L Battery
Sony PCG-41216L Battery] Politically, Lincoln fought back with patronage, by pitting his opponents against each other, and by appealing to the American people with his powers of oratory.[2Sony PCG-41213L Battery
Sony PCG-41214L Battery] His Gettysburg Address of 1863 became the most quoted speech in American history. It was an iconic statement of America's dedication to the principles of nationalism, republicanism, equal rights, liberty, and democracy.[
Sony PCG-41215L Battery3] At the close of the war, Lincoln held a moderate view of Reconstruction, seeking to reunite the nation speedily through a policy of generous reconciliation in the face of lingering and bitter divisiveness. Six days after the surrender of Confederate commanding general Robert E. Lee, however, Sony SVS13AB1GL Battery
Lincoln was assassinated by actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln's death was the first assassination of a U.S. president and sent the nation into mourning. Lincoln has been consistently ranked both by scholars[4] and the public[5] as one of the greatest U.S. presidents. Sony SVS131C1DL Battery
Main article: Early life and career of Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was born February 12, 1809, the second child of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Lincoln (née Hanks), in a one-room log cabin on the Sinking Spring Farm in Hardin County, Kentucky[6] (now LaRue County). Sony SVS131C24L Battery
Sony PCG-91311L Battery He is descended from Samuel Lincoln, who arrived in Hingham, Massachusetts, from Norfolk, England, in the 17th century.[7] Lincoln's paternal grandfather and namesake, Abraham, had moved his family from Virginia to Kentucky, where he was ambushed and killed in an Indian raid in 1786, Sony SVS131E1DL Battery
with his children, including Lincoln's father Thomas, looking on.[8] Thomas was left to make his own way on the frontier.[9Sony SVS131G1DL Battery
Sony PCG-91211L Battery] Lincoln's mother, Nancy, was the daughter of Lucy Hanks, and was born in what is now Mineral County, West Virginia, then part of Virginia. Lucy moved with Nancy to Kentucky. Nancy Hanks married Thomas, who became a respected citizen. He bought or leased several farms, including Knob Creek Farm. Sony SVS151C1GL Battery
Sony PCG-71914L BatteryThe family attended a Separate Baptists church, which had restrictive moral standards and opposed alcohol, dancing, and slavery.[10] Thomas enjoyed considerable status in Kentucky—where he sat on juries, Sony SVS151C2DL Battery
Sony PCG-71913L Battery appraised estates, served on country slave patrols, and guarded prisoners. By the time his son Abraham was born, Thomas owned two 600-acre (240 ha) farms, several town lots, livestock, and horses. He was among the richest men in the county. However, in 1816, Thomas lost all of his land in court cases because of faulty property titles.[11] Sony SVS151E1GL Battery
The young Lincoln in sculpture at Senn Park, Chicago
The family moved north across the Ohio River to free (i.e., non-slave) territory and made a new start in what was then Perry County but is now Spencer County, Indiana. Lincoln later noted that this move was "partly on account of slavery" but mainly due to land title difficulties.[11Sony PCG-61A11L Battery
] In Indiana, when Lincoln was nine, his mother Nancy died of milk sickness in 1818. After the death of Lincoln's mother, his older sister, Sarah, took charge of caring for him until their father remarried in 1819; Sarah later died in her 20s while giving birth to a stillborn son.[12]
Thomas Lincoln's new wife was the widow Sarah Bush Johnston, the mother of three children. Lincoln became very close to his stepmother, and referred to her as "Mother".[13] As a pre-teen, he did not like the hard labor associated with frontier life. Sony PCG-61A13L Battery
Sony PCG-71911L BatterySome in his family, and in the neighborhood, for a time considered him to be lazy.[14][15] As he grew into his teens, he willingly took responsibility for all chores expected of him as one of the boys in the household and became an adept axeman in his work building rail fences.
Sony PCG-71811L BatteryHe attained a reputation for brawn and audacity after a very competitive wrestling match to which he was challenged by the renowned leader of a group of ruffians, "the Clary's Grove boys".[
Sony PCG-71713L Battery16] Lincoln also agreed with the customary obligation of a son to give his father all earnings from work done outside the home until age 21.[17] In later years, Lincoln occasionally loaned his father money.[18Sony PCG-61A14L Battery
Sony PCG-71614L Battery] Lincoln became increasingly distant from his father, in part because of his father's lack of education. While young Lincoln's formal education consisted approximately of a year's worth of classes from several itinerant teachers, Sony PCG-71C11L Battery
he was mostly self-educated and was an avid reader and often sought access to any new books in the village. He read and reread the King James Bible, Aesop's Fables, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, and Franklin's Autobiography.[19][20] Sony PCG-71C12L Battery
In 1830, fearing a milk sickness outbreak along the Ohio River, the Lincoln family moved west, where they settled on public land in Macon County, Illinois, another free, non-slave state.[21] In 1831, Thomas relocated the family to a new homestead in Coles County, Illinois. It was then that,
Sony PCG-61913L Batteryas an ambitious 22-year-old who was now old enough to make his own decisions, Lincoln struck out on his own. Canoeing down the Sangamon River, Lincoln ended up in the village of New Salem in Sangamon County.[2Sony PCG-61813L Battery
Sony PCG-61911L Battery2] In the spring of 1831, hired by New Salem businessman Denton Offutt and accompanied by friends, he took goods by flatboat from New Salem to New Orleans via the Sangamon, Illinois, and Mississippi rivers. After arriving in New Orleans—and witnessing slavery firsthand—he walked back home.[23] Sony SVE141C11L Battery
Marriage an d children
Further information: Lincoln family tree, Medical and mental health of Abraham Lincoln, and Sexuality of Abraham Lincoln
1864 photo of President Lincoln with youngest son, Tad
Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of Abraham Lincoln, age 28
Lincoln's first romantic interest was Ann Rutledge, whom he met when he first moved to New Salem; by 1835, they were in a relationship but not formally engaged. She died at the age of 22 on August 25, 1835, most likely of typhoid fever.[24Sony SVE141D11L Battery
Sony SVE171G112 Battery] In the early 1830s, he met Mary Owens from Kentucky when she was visiting her sister. Late in 1836, Lincoln agreed to a match with Mary if she returned to New Salem. Mary did return in November 1836, Sony SVE141L11L Battery
Sony SVE171E12L Battery and Lincoln courted her for a time; however, they both had second thoughts about their relationship. On August 16, 1837, Lincoln wrote Mary a letter suggesting he would not blame her if she ended the relationship. She never replied and the courtship ended.[25]
In 1840, Lincoln became engaged to Mary Todd, who was from a wealthy slave-holding family in Lexington, Kentucky.[2
Sony SVE171C11L Battery6] They met in Springfield, Illinois, in December 1839[27] and were engaged the following December.[28] A wedding set for January 1, 1841, was canceled when the two broke off their engagement at Lincoln's initiative.[27][29] They later met again at a party and married on November 4, 1842, Sony SVE151E11L Battery
in the Springfield mansion of Mary's married sister.[30] While preparing for the nuptials and feeling anxiety again, Lincoln, when asked where he was going, replied, "To hell, I suppose."[31]
In 1844,
Sony SVE151J11L Battery the couple bought a house in Springfield near Lincoln's law office. Mary Todd Lincoln kept house, often with the help of a relative or hired servant girl.[32] Robert Todd Lincoln was born in 1843 and Edward Baker Lincoln (Eddie) in 1846. Lincoln "was remarkably fond of children",[33Sony SVE151G11L Battery
Sony SVE151G13L Battery] and the Lincolns were not considered to be strict with their children.[34] Edward died on February 1, 1850, in Springfield, probably of tuberculosis. "Willie" Lincoln was born on December 21, 1850, and died on February 20, 1862. Sony PCG-61713L Battery
Sony PCG-61317L Battery The Lincolns' fourth son, Thomas "Tad" Lincoln, was born on April 4, 1853, and died of heart failure at the age of 18 on July 16, 1871.[35] Robert was the only child to live to adulthood and have children. His last descendant, grandson Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith, died in 1985.[36] Sony PCG-91111L Battery
The deaths of their sons had profound effects on both parents. Later in life, Mary struggled with the stresses of losing her husband and sons, and Robert Lincoln committed her temporarily to a mental health asylum in 1875.[37Sony PCG-91112L Battery
Sony PCG-61316L Battery] Abraham Lincoln suffered from "melancholy", a condition which now is referred to as clinical depression.[38]
Lincoln's father-in-law was based in Lexington, Kentucky; he and others of the Todd family were either slave owners or slave traders. Lincoln was close to the Todds, and he and his family occasionally visited the Todd estate in Lexington.[39] Sony PCG-71312L Battery
Sony PCG-61315L Battery He was an affectionate, though often absent, husband and father of four children.
Early career and militia service
Main articles: Early life and career of Abraham Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln in the Black Hawk War
In 1832, at age 23,
Sony PCG-61312L Battery Lincoln and a partner bought a small general store on credit in New Salem, Illinois. Although the economy was booming in the region, the business struggled and Lincoln eventually sold his share. That March he began his political career with his first campaign for the Illinois General Assembly. Sony PCG-71311L Battery
Sony PCG-61311L Battery He had attained local popularity and could draw crowds as a natural raconteur in New Salem, though he lacked an education, powerful friends, and money, which may be why he lost. He advocated navigational improvements on the Sangamon River.[40] Sony PCG-71218L Battery
A sketch of candidate Abraham Lincoln
Before the election, Lincoln served as a captain in the Illinois Militia during the Black Hawk War.[41] Following his return, Lincoln continued his campaign for the August 6 election for the Illinois General Assembly. At 6 feet 4 inches (193 cm),[42Sony PCG-71217L Battery
Sony PCG-61215L Battery] he was tall and "strong enough to intimidate any rival". At his first speech, when he saw a supporter in the crowd being attacked, Lincoln grabbed the assailant by his "neck and the seat of his trousers" and threw him.[4Sony PCG-71313L Battery
Sony PCG-61211L Battery3] Lincoln finished eighth out of 13 candidates (the top four were elected), though he received 277 of the 300 votes cast in the New Salem precinct.[44] Sony PCG-71315L Battery
Lincoln served as New Salem's postmaster and later as county surveyor, all the while reading voraciously. He then decided to become a lawyer and began teaching himself law by reading Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England and other law books. Of his learning method, Lincoln stated: "I studied with nobody".[Sony PCG-71316L Battery
Sony PCG-71215L Battery45] His second campaign in 1834 was successful. He won election to the state legislature; though he ran as a Whig, many Democrats favored him over a more powerful Whig opponent.
Sony PCG-71212L Battery [46] Admitted to the bar in 1836,[47] he moved to Springfield, Illinois, and began to practice law under John T. Stuart, Mary Todd's cousin.[48] Lincoln became an able and successful lawyer with a reputation as a formidable adversary during cross-examinations and closing arguments. He partnered with Stephen T. Logan from 1841 until 1844, Sony PCG-71317L Battery
when he began his practice with William Herndon, whom Lincoln thought "a studious young man".[49] He served four successive terms in the Illinois House of Representatives as a Whig representative from Sangamon County.[50]
In the 1835–36 legislative session, he voted to expand suffrage to white males, whether landowners or not.[51] He was known for his "free soil" stance of opposing both slavery and abolitionism. He first articulated this in 1837, saying, "[ThSony PCG-3B1L Battery
e] Institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy, but the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils."[52] He closely followed Henry Clay in supporting the American Colonization Society program of making the abolition of slavery practical by helping the freed slaves to settle in Liberia in Africa.[53] Sony PCG-3B2L Battery
Congressman Lincoln
From the early 1830s, Lincoln was a steadfast Whig and professed to friends in 1861 to be, "an old line Whig, a disciple of Henry Clay".[54] The party, including Lincoln, favored economic modernization in banking, protective tariffs to fund internal improvements including railroads, and espoused urbanization as well.[55] Sony PCG-3B3L Battery
In 1846, Lincoln was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served one two-year term. He was the only Whig in the Illinois delegation, but he showed his party loyalty by participating in almost all votes and making speeches that echoed the party line.[56] Lincoln, in collaboration with abolitionist Congressman Joshua R. Giddings, Sony PCG-3B4L Battery
Sony PCG-3H2L Batterywrote a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia with compensation for the owners, enforcement to capture fugitive slaves, and a popular vote on the matter. He abandoned the bill when it failed to garner sufficient Whig supporters.[5Sony PCG-3C2L Battery
Sony PCG-3H1L Battery7] On foreign and military policy, Lincoln spoke out against the Mexican–American War, which he attributed to President Polk's desire for "military glory—that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood".[58Sony PCG-3C3L Battery
Sony PCG-3G3L Battery] Lincoln also supported the Wilmot Proviso, which, if it had been adopted, would have banned slavery in any U.S. territory won from Mexico.[59]
Lincoln emphasized his opposition to Polk by drafting and introducing his Spot Resolutions. The war had begun with a Mexican slaughter of American soldiers in territory disputed by Mexico and the U.S.; Polk insisted that Mexican soldiers had "invaded our territory and shed the blood of our fellow-citizens on our own soil".[60Sony PCG-3D3L Battery
Sony PCG-3B1L Battery][61] Lincoln demanded that Polk show Congress the exact spot on which blood had been shed and prove that the spot was on American soil.[6Sony PCG-81113L Battery
Sony PCG-81313L Battery1] Congress never enacted the resolution or even debated it, Sony PCG-3D4L Battery
Sony PCG-3F4L Battery the national papers ignored it, and it resulted in a loss of political support for Lincoln in his district. One Illinois newspaper derisively nicknamed him "spotty Lincoln".[62][63][64] Lincoln later regretted some of his statements, especially his attack on the presidential war-making powers.[65] Sony PCG-3E3L Battery
Realizing Clay was unlikely to win the presidency, Lincoln, who had pledged in 1846 to serve only one term in the House, supported General Zachary Taylor for the Whig nomination in the 1848 presidential election.[66]
Sony PCG-3F3L BatteryTaylor won and Lincoln hoped to be appointed Commissioner of the General Land Office, but that lucrative patronage job went to an Illinois rival, Justin Butterfield, considered by the administration to be a highly skilled lawyer, but in Lincoln's view, an "old fossil".[67] Sony PCG-3F1L Battery
The administration offered him the consolation prize of secretary or governor of the Oregon Territory. This distant territory was a Democratic stronghold, Sony PCG-81114L Battery
Sony PCG-81312L Battery and acceptance of the post would have effectively ended his legal and political career in Illinois, so he declined and resumed his law practice.[68] Sony PCG-5N4L Battery
Prairie lawyer
Lincoln in his late 30s – photo taken by one of Lincoln's law students around 1846
Lincoln returned to practicing law in Springfield, handling "every kind of business that could come before a prairie lawyer".[69Sony PCG-5P2L Battery
] Twice a year for 16 years, 10 weeks at a time, he appeared in county seats in the midstate region when the county courts were in session.[7Sony PCG-81214L Battery
Sony PCG-81311L Battery0] Lincoln handled many transportation cases in the midst of the nation's western expansion, particularly the conflicts arising from the operation of river barges under the many new railroad bridges. Sony PCG-5R1L Battery
Sony PCG-9Z2L BatteryAs a riverboat man, Lincoln initially favored those interests, but ultimately represented whoever hired him.[7Sony PCG-5R2L Battery
Sony PCG-9Z1L Battery1] His reputation grew, and he appeared before the Supreme Court of the United States, arguing a case involving a canal boat that sank after hitting a bridge.[72] In 1849, he received a patent for a flotation device for the movement of boats in shallow water. The idea was never commercialized, but Lincoln is the only president to hold a patent.[73][74]
In 1851, he represented the Alton & Sangamon Railroad in a dispute with one of its shareholders, James A. Barret, who had refused to pay the balance on his pledge to buy shares in the railroad on the grounds that the company had changed its original train route. Sony PCG-3J1L Battery
Sony PCG-5T2L Battery [75][76] Lincoln successfully argued that the railroad company was not bound by its original charter in existence at the time of Barret's pledge; the charter was amended in the public interest to provide a newer, superior, Sony PCG-5N2L Battery
Sony PCG-5T1L Battery and less expensive route, and the corporation retained the right to demand Barret's payment. The decision by the Illinois Supreme Court has been cited by numerous other courts in the nation.[75] Lincoln appeared before the Illinois Supreme Court in 175 cases, in 51 as sole counsel, of which 31 were decided in his favor. Sony PCG-5P4L Battery
Sony PCG-5S3L Battery [77] From 1853 to 1860, another of Lincoln's largest clients was the Illinois Central Railroad.[78]
Lincoln's most notable criminal trial occurred in 1858 when he defended William "Duff" Armstrong, who was on trial for the murder of James Preston Metzker.[7Sony PCG-5S1L Battery
Sony PCG-5S2L Battery9] The case is famous for Lincoln's use of a fact established by judicial notice in order to challenge the credibility of an eyewitness. After an opposing witness testified seeing the crime in the moonlight, Lincoln produced a Farmers' Almanac showing the moon was at a low angle, drastically reducing visibility. Based on this evidence, Armstrong was acquitted.[79
] Lincoln rarely raised objections in the courtroom; but in an 1859 case, where he defended a cousin, Peachy Harrison, who was accused of stabbing another to death, Lincoln angrily protested the judge's decision to exclude evidence favorable to his client. Sony PCG-7142L Battery
Sony PCG-8141L BatteryInstead of holding Lincoln in contempt of court as was expected, the judge, a Democrat, reversed his ruling, allowing the evidence and acquitting Harrison.[79][80]
Republican politics 1854–60 Sony PCG-7151L Battery
Slavery and a "House Divided"
Further information: Slave and free states and Abraham Lincoln and slavery
By the 1850s, slavery was still legal in the southern United States, but had been generally outlawed in the northern states, such as Illinois.[81] Lincoln disapproved of slavery, and the spread of slavery to new U.S. territory in the west.[ Sony PCG-7152L Battery
Sony PCG-813L Battery82] He returned to politics to oppose the pro-slavery Kansas–Nebraska Act (1854); this law repealed the slavery-restricting Missouri Compromise (1820). Senior Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois had incorporated popular sovereignty into the Act. Douglas' provision, which Lincoln opposed, Sony PCG-7153L Battery
specified settlers had the right to determine locally whether to allow slavery in new U.S. territory, rather than have such a decision restricted by the national Congress.[83] Eric Foner (2010) contrasts the abolitionists and anti-slavery Radical Republicans of the Northeast who saw slavery as a sin,
Sony PCG-7185L Battery with the conservative Republicans who thought it was bad because it hurt white people and blocked progress. Foner argues that Lincoln was a moderate in the middle,
Sony PCG-7184L Batteryopposing slavery primarily because it violated the republicanism principles of the Founding Fathers, especially the equality of all men and democratic self-government as expressed in the Declaration of Independence.[84]
Portrait of Dred Scott. Lincoln denounced the Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford as part of a conspiracy to extend slavery.
On October 16, 1854, in his "Peoria Speech", Lincoln declared his opposition to slavery, which he repeated en route to the presidency.[85Sony PCG-7154L Battery
Sony PCG-7182L Battery] Speaking in his Kentucky accent, with a very powerful voice,[86] he said the Kansas Act had a "declared indifference, but as I must think, a covert real zeal for the spread of slavery. I cannot but hate it. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. Sony PCG-7161L Battery
Sony PCG-7181L Battery I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world ..."[87]
In late 1854, Lincoln ran as a Whig for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois. At that time, senators were elected by the state legislature.[8Sony PCG-7162L Battery
Sony PCG-7174L Battery8] After leading in the first six rounds of voting in the Illinois assembly, his support began to dwindle, and Lincoln instructed his backers to vote for Lyman Trumbull, who defeated opponent Joel Aldrich Matteson.[8Sony PCG-7171L Battery
9] The Whigs had been irreparably split by the Kansas–Nebraska Act. Lincoln wrote, "I think I am a Whig, but others say there are no Whigs, and that I am an abolitionist, even though I do no more than oppose the extension of slavery."[9Sony PCG-7172L Battery
Sony PCG-7173L Battery0] Drawing on remnants of the old Whig party, and on disenchanted Free Soil, Liberty, and Democratic Party members, he was instrumental in forging the shape of the new Republican Party.[91]
Sony PCG-81411L BatteryAt the 1856 Republican National Convention, Lincoln placed second in the contest to become the party's candidate for vice president.[92]
In 1857–1858, Douglas broke with President James Buchanan, leading to a fight for control of the Democratic Party.
Sony PCG-81314L Battery Some eastern Republicans even favored the reelection of Douglas for the Senate in 1858, since he had led the opposition to the Lecompton Constitution, which would have admitted Kansas as a slave state.[9Sony PCG-21313L Battery
3] In March 1857, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford; Chief Justice Roger B. Taney opined that blacks were not citizens, and derived no rights from the Constitution. Lincoln denounced the decision, alleging it was the product of a conspiracy of Democrats to support the Slave Power.[
Sony PCG-81313L Battery94] Lincoln argued, "The authors of the Declaration of Independence never intended 'to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity', but they 'did consider all men created equal—equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'."[95] Sony PCG-31311L Battery
After the state Republican party convention nominated him for the U.S. Senate in 1858, Lincoln delivered his House Divided Speech, drawing on Mark 3:25: "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
Sony PCG-81312L BatteryIt will become all one thing, or all the other."[96] The speech created an evocative image of the danger of disunion caused by the slavery debate, and rallied Republicans across the North.[
Sony PCG-81311L Battery97] The stage was then set for the campaign for statewide election of the Illinois legislature which would, in turn, select Lincoln or Douglas as its U.S. senator.[98]
Lincoln–Douglas debates and Cooper Union speech
Lincoln in 1858, the year of his debates with Stephen Douglas.
The Senate campaign featured the seven Lincoln–Douglas debates of 1858, the most famous political debates in American history.[99] The principals stood in stark contrast both physically and politically.
Sony PCG-81214L Battery Lincoln warned that "The Slave Power" was threatening the values of republicanism, and accused Douglas of distorting the values of the Founding Fathers that all men are created equal, while Douglas emphasized his Freeport Doctrine, that local settlers were free to choose whether to allow slavery or not, and accused Lincoln of having joined the abolitionists.[100]
Sony PCG-81114L Battery The debates had an atmosphere of a prize fight and drew crowds in the thousands. Lincoln stated Douglas' popular sovereignty theory was a threat to the nation's morality and that Douglas represented a conspiracy to extend slavery to free states. Sony PCG-51113L Battery
Sony PCG-81112L Battery Douglas said that Lincoln was defying the authority of the U.S. Supreme Court and the Dred Scott decision.[101]
Though the Republican legislative candidates won more popular votes, the Democrats won more seats, and the legislature re-elected Douglas to the Senate. Despite the bitterness of the defeat for Lincoln, his articulation of the issues gave him a national political reputation.[102] In May 1859, Lincoln purchased the Illinois Staats-Anzeiger, Sony PCG-51211L Battery
a German-language newspaper which was consistently supportive; most of the state's 130,000 German Americans voted Democratic but there was Republican support that a German-language paper could mobilize.[103]
A life cast of Lincoln by sculptor Leonard Volk in 1860.
On February 27, 1860, New York party leaders invited Lincoln to give a speech at Cooper Union to a group of powerful Republicans. Lincoln argued that the Founding Fathers had little use for popular sovereignty and had repeatedly sought to restrict slavery. Sony PCG-51312L Battery
Sony PCG-71111L BatteryLincoln insisted the moral foundation of the Republicans required opposition to slavery, and rejected any "groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong".[10
Sony PCG-61412L Battery4] Despite his inelegant appearance—many in the audience thought him awkward and even ugly[105]—Lincoln demonstrated an intellectual leadership that brought him into the front ranks of the party and into contention for the Republican presidential nomination. Journalist Noah Brooks reported, Sony PCG-51411L Battery
Sony PCG-51513L Battery"No man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience."[106][107] Historian Donald described the speech as a "superb political move for an unannounced candidate, Sony PCG-51412L Battery
Sony PCG-51511L Battery to appear in one rival's (William H. Seward) own state at an event sponsored by the second rival's (Salmon P. Chase) loyalists, while not mentioning either by name during its delivery."[108] In response to an inquiry about his presidential intentions, Lincoln said, "The taste is in my mouth a little."[109] Sony VPCF115FM battery
Sony VPCF11JFX battery
1860 Presidential nomination and campaign
Main articles: Electoral history of Abraham Lincoln and United States presidential election, 1860
"The Rail Candidate"—Lincoln's 1860 candidacy is depicted as held up by the slavery issue—a slave on the left and party organization on the right.
On May 9–10, 1860, the Illinois Republican State Convention was held in Decatur.[110] Lincoln's followers organized a campaign team led by David Davis, Norman Judd, Leonard Swett, and Jesse DuBois, and Lincoln received his first endorsement to run for the presidency.[1Sony VPCF11MFX battery
Sony VPCF119HX battery11] Exploiting the embellished legend of his frontier days with his father, Lincoln's supporters adopted the label of "The Rail Candidate".[112] On May 18, at the Republican National Convention in Chicago, Lincoln's friends promised and manipulated and won the nomination on the third ballot, Sony VPCF11FGX battery
Sony VPCF114FX batterybeating candidates such as William H. Seward and Salmon P. Chase. A former Democrat, Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, was nominated for Vice President to balance the ticket. Lincoln's success depended on his reputation as a moderate on the slavery issue, and his strong support for Whiggish programs of internal improvements and the protective tariff.[1Sony VPCF113FX battery
Sony VPCF11PFX battery13] On the third ballot Pennsylvania put him over the top. Pennsylvania iron interests were reassured by his support for protective tariffs.[114] Lincoln's managers had been adroitly focused on this delegation as well as the others, while following Lincoln's strong dictate to "Make no contracts that bind me".[115] Sony VPCF11LFX battery
Most Republicans agreed with Lincoln that the North was the aggrieved party, as the Slave Power tightened its grasp on the national government with the Dred Scott decision and the presidency of James Buchanan. Throughout the 1850s, Sony VPCF11DGX battery
Sony VPCF11HGX battery Lincoln doubted the prospects of civil war, and his supporters rejected claims that his election would incite secession.[116] Meanwhile, Douglas was selected as the candidate of the Northern Democrats. Sony VPCF117FX battery
Delegates from 11 slave states walked out of the Democratic convention, disagreeing with Douglas' position on popular sovereignty, and ultimately selected John C. Breckinridge as their candidate.[117
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As Douglas and the other candidates went through with their campaigns, Lincoln was the only one of them who gave no speeches. Instead, he monitored the campaign closely and relied on the enthusiasm of the Republican Party. The party did the leg work that produced majorities across the North,
Sony VPCF11AFX batteryand produced an abundance of campaign posters, leaflets, and newspaper editorials. There were thousands of Republican speakers who focused first on the party platform, and second on Lincoln's life story, Sony VPCF11CGX battery
Sony VPCF11NFX battery emphasizing his childhood poverty. The goal was to demonstrate the superior power of "free labor", whereby a common farm boy could work his way to the top by his own efforts.[1Sony VPCF112FX battery
Sony VPCF1190X battery18] The Republican Party's production of campaign literature dwarfed the combined opposition; a Chicago Tribune writer produced a pamphlet that detailed Lincoln's life, and sold 100,000 to 200,000 copies.[119] Sony VPCF11KFX battery
Sony VPCF119GX battery
Presidency
Main article: Presidency of Abraham Lincoln
1860 election and secession
Main articles: United States presidential election, 1860 and Baltimore Plot
In 1860, northern and western electoral votes (shown in red) put Lincoln into the White House.
1861 inaugural at Capitol. The rotunda still under construction
On November 6, 1860, Lincoln was elected the 16th president of the United States, beating Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, John C. Breckinridge of the Southern Democrats, and John Bell of the new Constitutional Union Party. Sony VPCF116FX battery
Sony VPCF111FX battery He was the first president from the Republican Party. Winning entirely on the strength of his support in the North and West, no ballots were cast for him in 10 of the 15 Southern slave states, and he won only two of 996 counties in all the Southern states.[120
Dell Latitude E6420-ATG Battery] Lincoln received 1,866,452 votes, Douglas 1,376,957 votes, Breckinridge 849,781 votes, and Bell 588,789 votes. Turnout was 82.2 percent, with Lincoln winning the free Northern states, as well as California and Oregon. Douglas won Missouri, and split New Jersey with Lincoln.[12Dell Latitude E5500 Battery
Dell Latitude E6330 Battery1] Bell won Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, and Breckinridge won the rest of the South.[122] Although Lincoln won only a plurality of the popular vote, his victory in the electoral college was decisive: Lincoln had 180 and his opponents added together had only 123.
Dell Latitude E6230 BatteryThere were fusion tickets in which all of Lincoln's opponents combined to support the same slate of Electors in New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, but even if the anti-Lincoln vote had been combined in every state, Lincoln still would have won a majority in the Electoral College.[123]
As Lincoln's election became evident, secessionists made clear their intent to leave the Union before he took office the next March.[124] On December 20, 1860, South Carolina took the lead by adopting an ordinance of secession; Dell Latitude E5400 Battery
by February 1, 1861, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed.[125][126] Six of these states then adopted a constitution and declared themselves to be a sovereign nation, the Confederate States of America.[125] Dell Latitude E5510 Battery
Dell Latitude E6120 BatteryThe upper South and border states (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and Arkansas) listened to, but initially rejected, the secessionist appeal.[127]
Dell Latitude E5530 Battery President Buchanan and President-elect Lincoln refused to recognize the Confederacy, declaring secession illegal.[128] The Confederacy selected Jefferson Davis as its provisional President on February 9, 1861.[129] Dell latitude e6400 Battery
There were attempts at compromise. The Crittenden Compromise would have extended the Missouri Compromise line of 1820, dividing the territories into slave and free, contrary to the Republican Party's free-soil platform.[1Dell latitude e6500 Battery
Dell Latitude E6420 Battery30] Lincoln rejected the idea, saying, "I will suffer death before I consent ... to any concession or compromise which looks like buying the privilege to take possession of this government to which we have a constitutional right."[131] Dell Latitude E6400 ATG Battery
Dell Latitude E5520 BatteryLincoln, however, did tacitly support the proposed Corwin Amendment to the Constitution, which passed Congress before Lincoln came into office and was then awaiting ratification by the states. Dell Latitude E6400 XFR Battery
Dell Latitude E5420 BatteryThat proposed amendment would have protected slavery in states where it already existed and would have guaranteed that Congress would not interfere with slavery without Southern consent.[132Dell Latitude E6410 Battery
Dell Latitude E4300 Battery][133] A few weeks before the war, Lincoln sent a letter to every governor informing them Congress had passed a joint resolution to amend the Constitution.[134] Lincoln was open to the possibility of a constitutional convention to make further amendments to the Constitution.[135]
En route to his inauguration by train, Lincoln addressed crowds and legislatures across the North.[136]
Dell Latitude E4320 BatteryThe president-elect then evaded possible assassins in Baltimore, who were uncovered by Lincoln's head of security, Allan Pinkerton. On February 23, 1861, he arrived in disguise in Washington, D.C.,
Dell Latitude E4310 Batterywhich was placed under substantial military guard.[137] Lincoln directed his inaugural address to the South, proclaiming once again that he had no intention, or inclination, to abolish slavery in the Southern states: Dell Latitude E6410 ATG Battery
y
Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Dell Latitude E6510 Battery
Dell Precision M6400 BatterIndeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that "I have no purpose,
Dell Precision M4500 Battery directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."
—First inaugural address, 4 March 1861[138] Dell Precision M2400 Battery
The President ended his address with an appeal to the people of the South: "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies ... The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, Dell Latitude E6430 Battery
Dell XPS L701X Battery when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."[139] The failure of the Peace Conference of 1861 signaled that legislative compromise was implausible. By March 1861, no leaders of the insurrection had proposed rejoining the Union on any terms.
Dell XPS L502X BatteryMeanwhile, Lincoln and nearly every Republican leader agreed that the dismantling of the Union could not be tolerated.[140]
Beginning of the war
Main articles: American Civil War and Battle of Fort Sumter
Major Anderson, Ft. Sumter commander
The commander of Fort Sumter, South Carolina, Major Robert Anderson, sent a request for provisions to Washington, and the execution of Lincoln's order to meet that request was seen by the secessionists as an act of war. On April 12, 1861, Dell Latitude E6430-ATG Battery
Dell XPS L501X Battery Confederate forces fired on Union troops at Fort Sumter, forcing them to surrender, and began the war. Historian Allan Nevins argued that the newly inaugurated Lincoln made three miscalculations: underestimating the gravity of the crisis, exaggerating the strength of Unionist sentiment in the South, Dell Latitude E6430S Battery
Dell XPS 17-L702X Batteryand not realizing the Southern Unionists were insisting there be no invasion.[141] William Tecumseh Sherman talked to Lincoln during inauguration week and was "sadly disappointed" at his failure to realize that "the country was sleeping on a volcano" and that the South was preparing for war.[ Dell Latitude E6430-XFR Battery
Dell XPS 17-L701X Battery142] Donald concludes that, "His repeated efforts to avoid collision in the months between inauguration and the firing on Ft. Sumter showed he adhered to his vow not to be the first to shed fraternal blood. But he also vowed not to surrender the forts. Dell Latitude E6520N Battery
Dell XPS 17 Battery The only resolution of these contradictory positions was for the confederates to fire the first shot; they did just that."[143]
On April 15, Lincoln called on all the states to send detachments totaling 75,000 troops to recapture forts, protect Washington, and "preserve the Union", which, in his view, still existed intact despite the actions of the seceding states. Dell Latitude E6530 Battery
Dell XPS 15Z Battery This call forced the states to choose sides. Virginia declared its secession and was rewarded with the Confederate capital, despite the exposed position of Richmond so close to Union lines.
Dell XPS 15-L501X BatteryNorth Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas also voted for secession over the next two months. Secession sentiment was strong in Missouri and Maryland, but did not prevail; Kentucky tried to be neutral.[144]
Troops headed south towards Washington to protect the capital in response to Lincoln's call. On April 19, secessionist mobs in Baltimore that controlled the rail links attacked Union troops traveling to the capital. George William Brown, Dell Latitude E5220 Battery
Dell XPS 15D Batterythe Mayor of Baltimore, and other suspected Maryland politicians were arrested and imprisoned, without a warrant, as Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus.[145] John Merryman, a leader in the secessionist group in Maryland, petitioned Chief Justice Roger B. Taney to issue a writ of habeas corpus, Dell Latitude E5420M Battery
Dell XPS 14D-L401X Battery saying holding Merryman without a hearing was unlawful. Taney issued the writ, thereby ordering Merryman's release, but Lincoln ignored it. Then and throughout the war, Lincoln came under heavy, often vituperative attack from antiwar Democrats, called Copperheads.[146]
Assuming command for the Union in the war
After the fall of Fort Sumter, Lincoln realized the importance of taking immediate executive control of the war and making an overall strategy to put down the rebellion. Lincoln encountered an unprecedented political and military crisis, Dell Latitude E5430 Battery
and he responded as commander-in-chief, using unprecedented powers. He expanded his war powers, and imposed a blockade on all the Confederate shipping ports, disbursed funds before appropriation by Congress, Dell Inspiron 14V Battery
Dell Inspiron 14R Battery and after suspending habeas corpus, arrested and imprisoned thousands of suspected Confederate sympathizers. Lincoln was supported by Congress and the northern public for these actions. In addition, Lincoln had to contend with reinforcing strong Union sympathies in the border slave states and keeping the war from becoming an international conflict.[147]
"Running the 'Machine' ": An 1864 political cartoon takes a swing at Lincoln's administration—featuring William Fessenden, Edwin Stanton, William Seward, Gideon Welles, Lincoln and others.
The war effort was the source of continued disparagement of Lincoln, and dominated his time and attention. From the start, it was clear that bipartisan support would be essential to success in the war effort, and any manner of compromise alienated factions on both sides of the aisle,
Dell Inspiron N4110 Batterysuch as the appointment of Republicans and Democrats to command positions in the Union Army. Copperheads criticized Lincoln for refusing to compromise on the slavery issue. Conversely, Dell Inspiron N4030 Battery
Dell Inspiron N5010 Batterythe Radical Republicans criticized him for moving too slowly in abolishing slavery.[148] On August 6, 1861, Lincoln signed the Confiscation Act that authorized judiciary proceedings to confiscate and free slaves who were used to support the Confederate war effort.
Dell Inspiron N5010D BatteryIn practice the law had little effect, but it did signal political support for abolishing slavery in the Confederacy[149]
In late August 1861, General John C. Frémont, the 1856 Republican presidential nominee, issued, without consulting Washington, Dell Inspiron N7110 Battery
Dell Inspiron 17R Battery a proclamation of martial law in Missouri. He declared that any citizen found bearing arms could be court-martialed and shot, and that slaves of persons aiding the rebellion would be freed. Frémont was already under a cloud with charges of negligence in his command of the Department of the West compounded with allegations of fraud and corruption.
Dell Inspiron N7010 BatteryLincoln overruled Frémont's proclamation. Lincoln believed that Fremont's emancipation was political; neither militarily necessary nor legal.[150] Union enlistments from Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri increased by over 40,000 troops.[151] Dell Inspiron N7010R Battery
The Trent Affair of late 1861 threatened war with Great Britain. The U.S. Navy illegally intercepted a British merchant ship, the Trent, on the high seas and seized two Confederate envoys; Britain protested vehemently while the U.S. cheered. Lincoln resolved the issue by releasing the two men and war was successfully averted with Britain.[152] Dell Inspiron N7010D Battery
Dell Inspiron N4010D BatteryLincoln's foreign policy approach had been initially hands off, due to his inexperience; he left most diplomacy appointments and other foreign policy matters to his Secretary of State, William Seward. Dell Inspiron N5110 Battery
Dell Inspiron N4010 BatterySeward's initial reaction to the Trent affair, however, was too bellicose, so Lincoln also turned to Senator Charles Sumner, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and an expert in British diplomacy.[153]
To learn technical military terms, Lincoln borrowed and studied Henry Halleck's book, Elements of Military Art and Science from the Library of Congress.[154] Lincoln painstakingly monitored the telegraphic reports coming into the War Department in Washington, D.C. He kept close tabs on all phases of the military effort,
Dell Inspiron N3010R Batteryconsulted with governors, and selected generals based on their past success (as well as their state and party). In January 1862, after many complaints of inefficiency and profiteering in the War Department, Dell Inspiron N5030 Battery
Lincoln replaced Simon Cameron with Edwin Stanton as War Secretary. Stanton was one of many conservative Democrats (he supported Breckenridge in the 1860 election) who became anti-slavery Republicans under Lincoln's leadership.[1Sony SVS13AA11L Battery
Sony PCG-41414L Battery55] In terms of war strategy, Lincoln articulated two priorities: to ensure that Washington was well-defended, and to conduct an aggressive war effort that would satisfy the demand in the North for prompt, decisive victory; major Northern newspaper editors expected victory within 90 days.[1Sony SVS131A11L Battery
Sony PCG-41413L Battery56] Twice a week, Lincoln would meet with his cabinet in the afternoon, and occasionally Mary Lincoln would force him to take a carriage ride because she was concerned he was working too hard.[1Sony SVS131B11L Battery
Sony PCG-41412L Battery57] Lincoln learned from his chief of staff General Henry Halleck, a student of the European strategist Jomini, of the critical need to control strategic points, such as the Mississippi River;[158]
Sony PCG-41411L Batteryhe also knew well the importance of Vicksburg and understood the necessity of defeating the enemy's army, rather than simply capturing territory.[159]
General McClellan
After the Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run and the retirement of the aged Winfield Scott in late 1861, Lincoln appointed Major General George B. McClellan general-in-chief of all the Union armies.[160
Sony PCG-41218L Battery] McClellan, a young West Point graduate, railroad executive, and Pennsylvania Democrat, took several months to plan and attempt his Peninsula Campaign, longer than Lincoln wanted. The campaign's objective was to capture Richmond by moving the Army of the Potomac by boat to the peninsula and then overland to the Confederate capital.
Sony PCG-41217L BatteryMcClellan's repeated delays frustrated Lincoln and Congress, as did his position that no troops were needed to defend Washington. Lincoln insisted on holding some of McClellan's troops in defense of the capital; McClellan, Sony SVS151A11L Battery
Sony PCG-41216L Battery who consistently overestimated the strength of Confederate troops, blamed this decision for the ultimate failure of the Peninsula Campaign.[161]
Lincoln and McClellan after the Battle of Antietam
Lincoln removed McClellan as general-in-chief and appointed Henry Wager Halleck in March 1862, after McClellan's "Harrison's Landing Letter", in which he offered unsolicited political advice to Lincoln urging caution in the war effort.[16Sony SVS151B11L Battery
Sony PCG-41215L Battery2] McClellan's letter incensed Radical Republicans, who successfully pressured Lincoln to appoint John Pope, a Republican, as head of the new Army of Virginia. Pope complied with Lincoln's strategic desire to move toward Richmond from the north, thus protecting the capital from attack. Sony SVS151G1GL Battery
However, lacking requested reinforcements from McClellan, now commanding the Army of the Potomac, Pope was soundly defeated at the Second Battle of Bull Run in the summer of 1862, forcing the Army of the Potomac to defend Washington for a second time.[1Sony PCG-4121DL Battery
Sony PCG-41214L Battery63] The war also expanded with naval operations in 1862 when the CSS Virginia, formerly the USS Merrimack, damaged or destroyed three Union vessels in Norfolk, Virginia, before being engaged and damaged by the USS Monitor. Sony PCG-4121EL Battery
Sony PCG-41213L BatteryLincoln closely reviewed the dispatches and interrogated naval officers during their clash in the Battle of Hampton Roads.[164] Sony PCG-4121FL Battery
Despite his dissatisfaction with McClellan's failure to reinforce Pope, Lincoln was desperate, and restored him to command of all forces around Washington, to the dismay of all in his cabinet but Seward.[165
Sony PCG-41212L Battery] Two days after McClellan's return to command, General Robert E. Lee's forces crossed the Potomac River into Maryland, leading to the Battle of Antietam in September 1862.[166
Sony PCG-41211L BatteryThe ensuing Union victory was among the bloodiest in American history, but it enabled Lincoln to announce that he would issue an Emancipation Proclamation in January. Having composed the Proclamation some time earlier, Lincoln had waited for a military victory to publish it to avoid it being perceived as the product of desperation.[167] Sony PCG-4121GL Battery] McClellan then resisted the President's demand that he pursue Lee's retreating and exposed army, while his counterpart General Don Carlos Buell likewise refused orders to move the Army of the Ohio against rebel forces in eastern Tennessee. Sony SVS13AB1GL Battery
Sony PCG-91311L Battery As a result, Lincoln replaced Buell with William Rosecrans; and, after the 1862 midterm elections, he replaced McClellan with Republican Ambrose Burnside. Both of these replacements were political moderates and prospectively more supportive of the Commander-in-Chief.[168] Sony SVS131C1DL Battery
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Burnside, against the advice of the president, prematurely launched an offensive across the Rappahannock River and was stunningly defeated by Lee at Fredericksburg in December. Not only had Burnside been defeated on the battlefield, but his soldiers were disgruntled and undisciplined.
Sony PCG-71914L Battery Desertions during 1863 were in the thousands and they increased after Fredericksburg.[169] Lincoln brought in Joseph Hooker, despite his record of loose talk about the need for a military dictatorship.[170] Sony SVS131C24L Battery
The mid-term elections in 1862 brought the Republicans severe losses due to sharp disfavor with the administration over its failure to deliver a speedy end to the war, as well as rising inflation, new high taxes, rumors of corruption, Sony SVS131E1DL Battery
Sony PCG-71913L Battery the suspension of habeas corpus, the military draft law, and fears that freed slaves would undermine the labor market. The Emancipation Proclamation announced in September gained votes for the Republicans in the rural areas of New England and the upper Midwest,
Sony PCG-71912L Battery but it lost votes in the cities and the lower Midwest. While Republicans were discouraged, Democrats were energized and did especially well in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and New York. The Republicans did maintain their majorities in Congress and in the major states, except New York. Sony SVS131G1DL Battery
Sony PCG-71911L Battery The Cincinnati Gazette contended that the voters were "depressed by the interminable nature of this war, as so far conducted, and by the rapid exhaustion of the national resources without progress".[171] Sony SVS151C1GL Battery
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In the spring of 1863, Lincoln was optimistic about upcoming military campaigns to the point of thinking the end of the war could be near if a string of victories could be put together; these plans included Hooker's attack on Lee north of Richmond, Rosecrans' on Chattanooga, Grant's on Vicksburg, and a naval assault on Charleston.[172] Sony SVS151C2DL Battery
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Hooker was routed by Lee at the Battle of Chancellorsville in May,[173] but continued to command his troops for some weeks. He ignored Lincoln's order to divide his troops, and possibly force Lee to do the same in Harper's Ferry, Sony SVS151E1GL Battery
Sony PCG-71614L Batteryand tendered his resignation, which Lincoln accepted. He was replaced by George Meade, who followed Lee into Pennsylvania for the Gettysburg Campaign, which was a victory for the Union,
Sony PCG-61913L Battery though Lee's army avoided capture. At the same time, after initial setbacks, Grant laid siege to Vicksburg and the Union navy attained some success in Charleston harbor.[174] Sony PCG-61A11L Battery
Sony PCG-61911L BatteryAfter the Battle of Gettysburg, Lincoln clearly understood that his military decisions would be more effectively carried out by conveying his orders through his War Secretary or his general-in-chief on to his generals, who resented his civilian interference with their own plans. Even so, he often continued to give detailed directions to his generals as Commander-in-Chief.[175]
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Emancipation Proclamation
Main articles: Abraham Lincoln and slavery and Emancipation Proclamation
Lincoln presents the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet. Painted by Francis Bicknell Carpenter in 1864
Lincoln understood that the Federal government's power to end slavery was limited by the Constitution, which before 1865,
Sony PCG-61714L Battery committed the issue to individual states. He argued before and during his election that the eventual extinction of slavery would result from preventing its expansion into new U.S. territory. At the beginning of the war, he also sought to persuade the states to accept compensated emancipation in return for their prohibition of slavery. Sony PCG-61A13L Battery
Sony PCG-71C12L Battery Lincoln believed that curtailing slavery in these ways would economically expunge it, as envisioned by the Founding Fathers, under the constitution.[176] President Lincoln rejected two geographically limited emancipation attempts by Major General John C. Frémont in August 1861 and by Major General David Hunter in May 1862, Sony PCG-61A14L Battery
Sony PCG-71C11L Batteryon the grounds that it was not within their power, and it would upset the border states loyal to the Union.[177]
On June 19, 1862, endorsed by Lincoln, Congress passed an act banning slavery on all federal territory. In July 1862, the Second Confiscation Act was passed, which set up court procedures that could free the slaves of anyone convicted of aiding the rebellion. Sony SVE141C11L Battery
Sony SVE141D11L Battery
Although Lincoln believed it was not within Congress's power to free the slaves within the states, he approved the bill in deference to the legislature. He felt such action could only be taken by the Commander-in-Chief using war powers granted to the president by the Constitution, and Lincoln was planning to take that action. Sony SVE141L11L Battery
Sony SVE151E11L Battery
In that month, Lincoln discussed a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation with his cabinet. In it, he stated that "as a fit and necessary military measure, on January 1, 1863, all persons held as slaves in the Confederate states will thenceforward, and forever, be free."[178] Sony SVE151G11L Battery
Sony PCG-71216L Battery
Privately, Lincoln concluded at this point that the slave base of the Confederacy had to be eliminated. However Copperheads argued that emancipation was a stumbling block to peace and reunification. Republican editor Horace Greeley of the highly influential New York Tribune fell for the ploy,[179]
Sony PCG-71215L Battery and Lincoln refuted it directly in a shrewd letter of August 22, 1862. The President said the primary goal of his actions as president (he used the first person pronoun and explicitly refers to his "official duty") was preserving the Union:[180] Sony SVE151G13L Battery
Sony PCG-71212L Battery
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; Sony SVE151J11L Battery
Sony PCG-71211L Batteryand if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, Sony SVE171C11L Battery
Sony PCG-71318L Battery I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union ... [¶] I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.[181] Sony SVE171E11L Battery
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The Emancipation Proclamation, issued on September 22, 1862, and put into effect on January 1, 1863, declared free the slaves in 10 states not then under Union control, with exemptions specified for areas already under Union control in two states.[18
Sony PCG-71316L Battery2] Lincoln spent the next 100 days preparing the army and the nation for emancipation, while Democrats rallied their voters in the 1862 off-year elections by warning of the threat freed slaves posed to northern whites.[183] Sony SVE171E12L Battery
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Once the abolition of slavery in the rebel states became a military objective, as Union armies advanced south, more slaves were liberated until all three million of them in Confederate territory were freed.
Sony PCG-71313L Battery Lincoln's comment on the signing of the Proclamation was: "I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper."[184] For some time, Lincoln continued earlier plans to set up colonies for the newly freed slaves. Sony SVE171G112 Battery
Sony PCG-71217L BatteryHe commented favorably on colonization in the Emancipation Proclamation, but all attempts at such a massive undertaking failed.[18Sony PCG-61713L Battery
Sony PCG-71218L Battery5] A few days after Emancipation was announced, 13 Republican governors met at the War Governors' Conference; they supported the president's Proclamation, but suggested the removal of General George B. McClellan as commander of the Union Army.[186]
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Using former slaves in the military was official government policy after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. By the spring of 1863, Lincoln was ready to recruit black troops in more than token numbers. Sony PCG-71312L BatteryIn a letter to Andrew Johnson, the military governor of Tennessee, encouraging him to lead the way in raising black troops, Lincoln wrote, "The bare sight of 50,000 armed and drilled black soldiers on the banks of the Mississippi would end the rebellion at once".[18
Sony PCG-91112L Battery
] By the end of 1863, at Lincoln's direction, General Lorenzo Thomas had recruited 20 regiments of blacks from the Mississippi Valley.[188] Frederick Douglass once observed of Lincoln: "In his company, I was never reminded of my humble origin, or of my unpopular color".[189] 7Sony PCG-91111L Battery
Gettysburg Address
Main article: Gettysburg Address
The only confirmed photo of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, some three hours before the speech.
With the great Union victory at the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, and the defeat of the Copperheads in the Ohio election in the fall, Lincoln maintained a strong base of party support and was in a strong position to redefine the war effort, Sony PCG-61211L Battery
Sony PCG-3E3L Battery despite the New York City draft riots. The stage was set for his address at the Gettysburg battlefield cemetery.[190] Defying Lincoln's prediction that "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here," the Address became the most quoted speech in American history.[3]
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The Gettysburg Address was delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863. In 272 words, and three minutes, Lincoln asserted the nation was born not in 1789, Sony PCG-61215L Battery
Sony PCG-3D3L Battery but in 1776, "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." He defined the war as an effort dedicated to these principles of liberty and equality for all.
Sony PCG-3C3L Battery The emancipation of slaves was now part of the national war effort. He declared that the deaths of so many brave soldiers would not be in vain, that slavery would end as a result of the losses, and the future of democracy would be assured, Sony PCG-61311L Battery
Sony PCG-3C2L Batterythat "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Lincoln concluded that the Civil War had a profound objective: a new birth of freedom in the nation.[191][192] Sony PCG-61312L Battery
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General Grant
President Lincoln (center right) with, from left, Generals Sherman and Grant and Admiral Porter – 1868 painting of events aboard the River Queen in March 1865
Meade's failure to capture Lee's army as it retreated from Gettysburg, and the continued passivity of the Army of the Potomac, Sony PCG-61315L Battery
Sony PCG-3B3L Batterypersuaded Lincoln that a change in command was needed. General Ulysses S. Grant's victories at the Battle of Shiloh and in the Vicksburg campaign impressed Lincoln and made Grant a strong candidate to head the Union Army. Responding to criticism of Grant after Shiloh, Lincoln had said, "I can't spare this man. He fights."[193] Sony PCG-61316L Battery
Sony PCG-3B2L Battery With Grant in command, Lincoln felt the Union Army could relentlessly pursue a series of coordinated offensives in multiple theaters, and have a top commander who agreed on the use of black troops.[194] Sony PCG-61317L Battery
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Nevertheless, Lincoln was concerned that Grant might be considering a candidacy for President in 1864, as McClellan was. Lincoln arranged for an intermediary to make inquiry into Grant's political intentions, and being assured that he had none, submitted to the Senate Grant's promotion to commander of the Union Army. Sony PCG-3F1L Battery
Sony PCG-3H4L Battery He obtained Congress's consent to reinstate for Grant the rank of Lieutenant General, which no officer had held since George Washington.[195] Sony PCG-3F2L Battery
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Grant waged his bloody Overland Campaign in 1864. This is often characterized as a war of attrition, given high Union losses at battles such as the Battle of the Wilderness and Cold Harbor. Even though they had the advantage of fighting on the defensive, the Confederate forces had "almost as high a percentage of casualties as the Union forces".[1Sony PCG-3F3L Battery
Sony PCG-3H2L Battery96] The high casualty figures of the Union alarmed the North; Grant had lost a third of his army, and Lincoln asked what Grant's plans were, to which the general replied, "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer."[197] Sony PCG-3F4L Battery
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The Confederacy lacked reinforcements, so Lee's army shrank with every costly battle. Grant's army moved south, crossed the James River, forcing a siege and trench warfare outside Petersburg, Virginia. Lincoln then made an extended visit to Grant's headquarters at City Point, Sony PCG-3G3L Battery
Sony PCG-3G5L BatteryVirginia. This allowed the president to confer in person with Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman about the hostilities, as Sherman coincidentally managed a hasty visit to Grant from his position in North Carolina. Sony PCG-5N4L Battery
Sony PCG-9Z2L Battery [198] Lincoln and the Republican Party mobilized support for the draft throughout the North, and replaced the Union losses.[199]
Lincoln authorized Grant to target the Confederate infrastructure—such as plantations, railroads, and bridges—hoping to destroy the South's morale and weaken its economic ability to continue fighting.
Sony PCG-9Z1L Battery Grant's move to Petersburg resulted in the obstruction of three railroads between Richmond and the South. This strategy allowed Generals Sherman and Philip Sheridan to destroy plantations and towns in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. The damage caused by Sherman's March to the Sea through Georgia in 1864 was limited to a 60-mile (97 km) swath, Sony PCG-5P2L Battery
Sony PCG-5T3L Batterybut neither Lincoln nor his commanders saw destruction as the main goal, but rather defeat of the Confederate armies. As Neely (2004) concludes, there was no effort to engage in "total war" against civilians, as in World War II.[200] Sony PCG-5R1L Battery
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Confederate general Jubal Anderson Early began a series of assaults in the North that threatened the Capital. During Early's raid on Washington, D.C. in 1864, Lincoln was watching the combat from an exposed position; Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes shouted at him, "Get down, you damn fool, before you get shot!"
Sony PCG-5T1L Battery [201] After repeated calls on Grant to defend Washington, Sheridan was appointed and the threat from Early was dispatched.[202] Sony PCG-5R2L Battery
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As Grant continued to wear down Lee's forces, efforts to discuss peace began. Confederate Vice President Stephens led a group to meet with Lincoln, Seward, and others at Hampton Roads. Lincoln refused to allow any negotiation with the Confederacy as a coequal; his sole objective was an agreement to end the fighting and the meetings produced no results.[2Sony PCG-5N2L Battery
Sony PCG-5S3L Battery03] On April 1, 1865, Grant successfully outflanked Lee's forces in the Battle of Five Forks and nearly encircled Petersburg, and the Confederate government evacuated Richmond. Days later, when that city fell, Sony PCG-5P4L Battery
Lincoln visited the vanquished Confederate capital; as he walked through the city, white Southerners were stone-faced, but freedmen greeted him as a hero. On April 9, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox and the war was effectively over.[204] Sony PCG-5S1L Battery
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1864 re-election
Main articles: Electoral history of Abraham Lincoln and United States presidential election, 1864
Lincoln was a master politician, bringing together—and holding together—all the main factions of the Republican Party, Sony PCG-7142L Battery
Sony PCG-8151L Batteryand bringing in War Democrats such as Edwin M. Stanton and Andrew Johnson as well. Lincoln spent many hours a week talking to politicians from across the land and using his patronage powers—greatly expanded over peacetime—to hold the factions of his party together,
Sony PCG-8141L Batterybuild support for his own policies, and fend off efforts by Radicals to drop him from the 1864 ticket.[205][206] At its 1864 convention, the Republican Party selected Andrew Johnson, a War Democrat from the Southern state of Tennessee, as his running mate. To broaden his coalition to include War Democrats as well as Republicans, Lincoln ran under the label of the new Union Party.[207]
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When Grant's 1864 spring campaigns turned into bloody stalemates and Union casualties mounted, the lack of military success wore heavily on the President's re-election prospects, and many Republicans across the country feared that Lincoln would be defeated. Sharing this fear, Sony PCG-7151L Battery
Sony PCG-7185L BatteryLincoln wrote and signed a pledge that, if he should lose the election, he would still defeat the Confederacy before turning over the White House:[208]
This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected.
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Sony PCG-7184L BatteryThen it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterward.[209] Sony PCG-7152L Battery
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Lincoln did not show the pledge to his cabinet, but asked them to sign the sealed envelope.
An electoral landslide (in red) for Lincoln in the 1864 election, southern states (brown) and territories (light brown) not in play
Lincoln's second inaugural address in 1865 at the almost completed Capitol building
While the Democratic platform followed the "Peace wing" of the party and called the war a "failure", their candidate, General George B. McClellan, Sony PCG-7153L Battery
Sony PCG-7181L Batterysupported the war and repudiated the platform. Lincoln provided Grant with more troops and mobilized his party to renew its support of Grant in the war effort. Sherman's capture of Atlanta in September and David Farragut's capture of Mobile ended defeatist jitters;[21
Sony PCG-7174L Battery0] the Democratic Party was deeply split, with some leaders and most soldiers openly for Lincoln. By contrast, the National Union Party was united and energized as Lincoln made emancipation the central issue, and state Republican parties stressed the perfidy of the Copperheads.[21Sony PCG-7154L Battery
1] Lincoln was re-elected in a landslide, carrying all but three states, and receiving 78 percent of the Union soldiers' vote.[212]
On March 4, 1865, Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address. In it, he deemed the high casualties on both sides to be God's will. Historian Mark Noll concludes it ranks "among the small handful of semi-sacred texts by which Americans conceive their place in the world".[213] Lincoln said:
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Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, Sony PCG-7161L Battery
Sony PCG-7172L Batteryso still it must be said, "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether". With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, Sony PCG-7162L Battery
Sony PCG-7171L Battery let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.[214]
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Reconstruction
Main article: Reconstruction Era
Reconstruction began during the war, as Lincoln and his associates anticipated questions of how to reintegrate the conquered southern states, and how to determine the fates of Confederate leaders and freed slaves. Sony PCG-21313L Battery
Sony PCG-81314L Battery Shortly after Lee's surrender, a general had asked Lincoln how the defeated Confederates should be treated, and Lincoln replied, "Let 'em up easy."[215] In keeping with that sentiment, Lincoln led the moderates regarding Reconstruction policy, and was opposed by the Radical Republicans,
Sony PCG-81313L Battery under Rep. Thaddeus Stevens, Sen. Charles Sumner and Sen. Benjamin Wade, political allies of the president on other issues. Determined to find a course that would reunite the nation and not alienate the South, Lincoln urged that speedy elections under generous terms be held throughout the war. Sony PCG-31311L Battery
Sony PCG-81312L BatteryHis Amnesty Proclamation of December 8, 1863, offered pardons to those who had not held a Confederate civil office, had not mistreated Union prisoners, and would sign an oath of allegiance.[216]
A political cartoon of Andrew Johnson and Abraham Lincoln, 1865, entitled "The Rail Splitter At Work Repairing the Union." The caption reads (Johnson): Take it quietly Uncle Abe and I will draw it closer than ever. (Lincoln): Sony PCG-41112L Battery
Sony PCG-81214L Battery A few more stitches Andy and the good old Union will be mended.
As Southern states were subdued, critical decisions had to be made as to their leadership while their administrations were re-formed. Of special importance were Tennessee and Arkansas, where Lincoln appointed Generals Andrew Johnson and Frederick Steele as military governors, respectively. In Louisiana, Sony PCG-51111L Battery
Sony PCG-81114L BatteryLincoln ordered General Nathaniel P. Banks to promote a plan that would restore statehood when 10 percent of the voters agreed to it. Lincoln's Democratic opponents seized on these appointments to accuse him of using the military to ensure his and the Republicans' political aspirations. Sony PCG-51113L Battery
Sony PCG-81113L BatteryOn the other hand, the Radicals denounced his policy as too lenient, and passed their own plan, the Wade-Davis Bill, in 1864. When Lincoln vetoed the bill, the Radicals retaliated by refusing to seat representatives elected from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee.[217]
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Lincoln's appointments were designed to keep both the moderate and Radical factions in harness. To fill Chief Justice Taney's seat on the Supreme Court, he named the choice of the Radicals, Salmon P. Chase, who Lincoln believed would uphold the emancipation and paper money policies.[218]
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After implementing the Emancipation Proclamation, which did not apply to every state, Lincoln increased pressure on Congress to outlaw slavery throughout the entire nation with a constitutional amendment. Lincoln declared that such an amendment would "clinch the whole matter".[219]
Sony PCG-71111L BatteryBy December 1863 a proposed constitutional amendment that would outlaw slavery absolutely was brought to Congress for passage. This first attempt at an amendment failed to pass,
Sony PCG-61412L Batteryfalling short of the required two-thirds majority on June 15, 1864, in the House of Representatives. Passage of the proposed amendment became part of the Republican/Unionist platform in the election of 1864. Sony PCG-51211L Battery
Sony PCG-51513L BatteryAfter a long debate in the House, a second attempt passed Congress on January 31, 1865, and was sent to the state legislatures for ratification.[220][221] Upon ratification, it became the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on December 6, 1865.[222]
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As the war drew to a close, Lincoln's presidential Reconstruction for the South was in flux; having believed the federal government had limited responsibility to the millions of freedmen. He signed into law Senator Charles Sumner's Freedman's Bureau bill that set up a temporary federal agency designed to meet the immediate material needs of former slaves. Sony PCG-51311L Battery
The law assigned land for a lease of three years with the ability to purchase title for the freedmen. Lincoln stated that his Louisiana plan did not apply to all states under Reconstruction. Shortly before his assassination, Lincoln announced he had a new plan for southern Reconstruction.
Sony PCG-51412L BatteryDiscussions with his cabinet revealed Lincoln planned short-term military control over southern states, until readmission under the control of southern Unionists.[223]
Redefining the republic and republicanism
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Lincoln in February 1865, about two months before his death.
The successful reunification of the states had consequences for the name of the country. The term "the United States" has historically been used, sometimes in the plural ("these United States"), and other times in the singular, Sony VPCF115FM battery
Sony VPCF119HX battery without any particular grammatical consistency. The Civil War was a significant force in the eventual dominance of the singular usage by the end of the 19th century.[224]
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In recent years, historians such as Harry Jaffa, Herman Belz, John Diggins, Vernon Burton and Eric Foner have stressed Lincoln's redefinition of republican values. As early as the 1850s, a time when most political rhetoric focused on the sanctity of the Constitution, Sony VPCF11JFX battery
Sony VPCF11PFX battery Lincoln redirected emphasis to the Declaration of Independence as the foundation of American political values—what he called the "sheet anchor" of republicanism.[2
Sony VPCF11HGX battery25] The Declaration's emphasis on freedom and equality for all, in contrast to the Constitution's tolerance of slavery, shifted the debate. Sony VPCF11MFX battery
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Sony VPCF11AFX battery As Diggins concludes regarding the highly influential Cooper Union speech of early 1860, "Lincoln presented Americans a theory of history that offers a profound contribution to the theory and destiny of republicanism itself."[22Sony VPCF11FGX battery
Sony VPCF119GX battery6] His position gained strength because he highlighted the moral basis of republicanism, rather than its legalisms.[22
Sony VPCF11BFX battery7] Nevertheless, in 1861, Lincoln justified the war in terms of legalisms (the Constitution was a contract, and for one party to get out of a contract all the other parties had to agree), and then in terms of the national duty to guarantee a republican form of government in every state.[228]
Sony VPCF11NFX battery Burton (2008) argues that Lincoln's republicanism was taken up by the Freedmen as they were emancipated.[229]
In March 1861, in his First Inaugural Address, Lincoln explored the nature of democracy. He denounced secession as anarchy, and explained that majority rule had to be balanced by constitutional restraints in the American system. He said "A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, Sony VPCF113FX battery
Sony VPCF11GGX battery and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people."[230]
Other enactments
Lincoln adhered to the Whig theory of the presidency, which gave Congress primary responsibility for writing the laws while the Executive enforced them. Lincoln only vetoed four bills passed by Congress; the only important one was the Wade-Davis Bill with its harsh program of Reconstruction.[231]
Sony VPCF111FX batteryHe signed the Homestead Act in 1862, making millions of acres of government-held land in the West available for purchase at very low cost. The Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act, also signed in 1862, provided government grants for agricultural colleges in each state. The Pacific Railway Acts of 1862 and 1864 granted federal support for the construction of the United States' First Transcontinental Railroad, which was completed in 1869.[23Sony VPCF11LFX battery
Sony VPCF116FX battery2] The passage of the Homestead Act and the Pacific Railway Acts was made possible by the absence of Southern congressmen and senators who had opposed the measures in the 1850s.[233]
Other important legislation involved two measures to raise revenues for the Federal government: tariffs (a policy with long precedent), and a new Federal income tax. In 1861, Lincoln signed the second and third Morrill Tariff, the first having become law under James Buchanan. Also in 1861, Lincoln signed the Revenue Act of 1861, Sony VPCF11DGX battery
Sony VPCF11CGX battery creating the first U.S. income tax.[235] This created a flat tax of 3 percent on incomes above $800 ($20,400 in current dollar terms), which was later changed by the Revenue Act of 1862 to a progressive rate structure.[236] Sony VPCF117FX battery
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Lincoln also presided over the expansion of the federal government's economic influence in several other areas. The creation of the system of national banks by the National Banking Act provided a strong financial network in the country. It also established a national currency. In 1862, Congress created, with Lincoln's approval, the Department of Agriculture.[237] In 1862, Lincoln sent a senior general, John Pope, Dell XPS 14 Battery
to put down the "Sioux Uprising" in Minnesota. Presented with 303 execution warrants for convicted Santee Dakota who were accused of killing innocent farmers, Lincoln conducted his own personal review of each of these warrants, eventually approving 39 for execution (one was later reprieved).[238
Dell XPS L502X Battery] President Lincoln had planned to reform federal Indian policy.[239]
In the wake of Grant's casualties in his campaign against Lee, Lincoln had considered yet another executive call for a military draft, Dell XPS 14D Battery
but it was never issued. In response to rumors of one, however, the editors of the New York World and the Journal of Commerce published a false draft proclamation which created an opportunity for the editors and others employed at the publications to corner the gold market.
Dell XPS 17-L702X BatteryLincoln's reaction was to send the strongest of messages to the media about such behavior; he ordered the military to seize the two papers. The seizure lasted for two days.[240]
Lincoln is largely responsible for the institution of the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States.[241] Before Lincoln's presidency, Thanksgiving, while a regional holiday in New England since the 17th century, Dell XPS 14D-L401X Battery
Dell XPS L702X Battery had been proclaimed by the federal government only sporadically and on irregular dates. The last such proclamation had been during James Madison's presidency 50 years before. In 1863, Lincoln declared the final Thursday in November of that year to be a day of Thanksgiving.[241]
Dell XPS 17 Battery In June 1864, Lincoln approved the Yosemite Grant enacted by Congress, which provided unprecedented federal protection for the area now known as Yosemite National Park.[242]
Salmon Portland Chase was Lincoln's choice to be Chief Justice of the United States.
Lincoln's declared philosophy on court nominations was that "we cannot ask a man what he will do, and if we should, and he should answer us, we should despise him for it. Therefore we must take a man whose opinions are known."[2Dell XPS 15 Battery
Dell XPS 15-L502X Battery41] Lincoln made five appointments to the United States Supreme Court. Noah Haynes Swayne, nominated January 21, 1862 and appointed January 24, 1862, was chosen as an anti-slavery lawyer who was committed to the Union. Samuel Freeman Miller, nominated and appointed on July 16, 1862, Dell XPS 15D Battery
Dell XPS 15-L501X Battery supported Lincoln in the 1860 election and was an avowed abolitionist. David Davis, Lincoln's campaign manager in 1860, nominated December 1, 1862 and appointed December 8, 1862, had also served as a judge in Lincoln's Illinois court circuit. Stephen Johnson Field, a previous California Supreme Court justice, Dell Inspiron 14V Battery
Dell Inspiron 14R Battery was nominated March 6, 1863 and appointed March 10, 1863, and provided geographic balance, as well as political balance to the court as a Democrat. Finally, Lincoln's Treasury Secretary, Salmon P. Chase, Dell Inspiron N4020 Battery
Dell Inspiron 13R Batterywas nominated as Chief Justice, and appointed the same day, on December 6, 1864. Lincoln believed Chase was an able jurist, would support Reconstruction legislation, and that his appointment united the Republican Party.[243] Dell Inspiron N4030 Battery
Other judicial appointments
Lincoln appointed 32 federal judges, including four Associate Justices and one Chief Justice to the Supreme Court of the United States, and 27 judges to the United States district courts. Lincoln appointed no judges to the United States circuit courts during his time in office. Dell Inspiron N7110 Battery
States admitted to the Union
West Virginia, admitted to the Union June 20, 1863, contained the former north-westernmost counties of Virginia that seceded from Virginia after that commonwealth declared its secession from the Union. As a condition for its admission, West Virginia's constitution was required to provide for the gradual abolition of slavery. Nevada, which became the third State in the far-west of the continent, was admitted as a free state on October 31, 1864.[244] Dell Inspiron N7010R Battery
Assassination
Main articles: Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and Funeral and burial of Abraham Lincoln
John Wilkes Booth was a well-known actor and a Confederate spy from Maryland; though he never joined the Confederate army, Dell Inspiron N7010D Battery
Dell Inspiron 15R Batteryhe had contacts with the Confederate secret service.[245] In 1864, Booth formulated a plan (very similar to one of Thomas N. Conrad previously authorized by the Confederacy)[246] to kidnap Lincoln in exchange for the release of Confederate prisoners.
Shown in the presidential booth of Ford's Theatre, from left to right, are Henry Rathbone, Clara Harris, Mary Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, and his assassin John Wilkes Booth.
After attending an April 11, 1865, speech in which Lincoln promoted voting rights for blacks, an incensed Booth changed his plans and became determined to assassinate the president.[247] Learning that the President, First Lady, Dell Inspiron N5110 Battery
and head Union general Ulysses S. Grant would be attending Ford's Theatre, Booth formulated a plan with co-conspirators to assassinate Vice President Andrew Johnson, Secretary of State William H. Seward and General Grant. Dell Inspiron N5030 Battery
Dell Inspiron N7010 Battery Without his main bodyguard, Ward Hill Lamon, Lincoln left to attend the play Our American Cousin on April 14. Grant along with his wife chose at the last minute to travel to Philadelphia instead of attending the play.[248] Dell Inspiron N5010R Battery
Lincoln's bodyguard, John Parker, left Ford's Theater during intermission to join Lincoln's coachman for drinks in the Star Saloon next door. The now unguarded President sat in his state box in the balcony.
Dell Inspiron N4010R BatterySeizing the opportunity, Booth crept up from behind and at about 10:13 pm, aimed at the back of Lincoln's head and fired at point-blank range, mortally wounding the President. Major Henry Rathbone momentarily grappled with Booth, but Booth stabbed him and escaped.[249][250]
After being on the run for 10 days, Booth was tracked down and found on a farm in Virginia, some 70 miles (110 km) south of Washington, D.C. After a brief fight with Union troops, Booth was killed by Sergeant Boston Corbett on April 26.[251] Dell Inspiron N3010 Battery
An Army surgeon, Doctor Charles Leale, was sitting nearby at the theater and immediately assisted the President. He found the President unresponsive, barely breathing and with no detectable pulse.
Dell Latitude E6530 Battery Having determined that the President had been shot in the head, and not stabbed in the shoulder as originally thought, he made an attempt to clear the blood clot, after which the President began to breathe more naturally.[252] The dying man was taken across the street to Petersen House. Dell Latitude E4200 Battery
Dell Latitude E6520N Battery After being in a coma for nine hours, Lincoln died at 7:22 am on April 15. Presbyterian minister Phineas Densmore Gurley, then present, was asked to offer a prayer, after which Secretary of War Stanton saluted and said, "Now he belongs to the ages."[25Dell Latitude E4300 Battery
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Lincoln's flag-enfolded body was then escorted in the rain to the White House by bareheaded Union officers, while the city's church bells rang. President Johnson was sworn in at 10:00 am, less than 3 hours after Lincoln's death. The late President lay in state in the East Room, and then in the Capitol Rotunda from April 19 through April 21. Dell Latitude E4310 Battery
Dell Latitude E6430 ATG Battery For his final journey with his son Willie, both caskets were transported in the executive coach "United States" and for three weeks the Lincoln Special funeral train decorated in black bunting[254Dell Latitude E5400 Battery
Dell Latitude E6430 Battery] bore Lincoln's remains on a slow circuitous waypoint journey from Washington D.C. to Springfield, Illinois stopping at many cities across the North for large-scale memorials attended by hundreds of thousands, as well as many people who gathered in informal trackside tributes with bands, bonfires and hymn singing[255] Dell Latitude E5420 Battery
Dell Latitude E5530 Battery [256] or silent reverence with hat in hand as the railway procession slowly passed by.
Religious and philosophical beliefs
Further information: Abraham Lincoln and religion
Lincoln, painting by George Peter Alexander Healy in 1869
As a young man, Lincoln was clearly a religious skeptic,[257] or, in the words of a biographer, even an iconoclast.[258] Later in life, Lincoln's frequent use of religious imagery and language might have reflected his own personal beliefs or might have been a device to appeal to his audiences, who were mostly evangelical Protestants.[259] He never joined a church, although he frequently attended with his wife,[260] but he was deeply familiar with the Bible, quoted it and praised it.[261]
In the 1840s Lincoln subscribed to the Doctrine of Necessity, a belief that asserted the human mind was controlled by some higher power. Dell Latitude E5520 Battery
Dell Latitude E5420M Battery [262] In the 1850s, Lincoln acknowledged "providence" in a general way, and rarely used the language or imagery of the evangelicals; he regarded the republicanism of the Founding Fathers with an almost religious reverence.[26Dell Latitude E6120 Battery
Dell Latitude E5520 Battery3] When he suffered the death of his son Edward, Lincoln more frequently acknowledged his own need to depend on God.[264] The death of his son Willie in February 1862 may have caused Lincoln to look toward religion for answers and solace.[265] After Willie's death, Lincoln considered why, from a divine standpoint, Dell Latitude E6220 Battery
Dell Latitude E6330 Batterythe severity of the war was necessary. He wrote at this time that God "could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Dell Latitude E6320 Battery
Dell Latitude E6230 Battery Yet the contest proceeds."[266] On the day Lincoln was assassinated, he reportedly told his wife Mary at Ford's Theatre he desired to visit the Holy Land.[267]
Historical reputation
In surveys of scholars ranking Presidents since the 1940s, Lincoln is consistently ranked in the top three, often #1.[4][5] A 2004 study found that scholars in the fields of history and politics ranked Lincoln number one, while legal scholars placed him second after Washington.[268] Of all the presidential ranking polls conducted since 1948, Dell Latitude E6400 Battery
Lincoln has been rated at the very top in the majority of polls: Schlesinger 1948, Schlesinger 1962, 1982 Murray Blessing Survey, Chicago Tribune 1982 poll, Schlesinger 1996, CSPAN 1996, Ridings-McIver 1996, Time 2008, and CSPAN 2009. Dell Latitude E6410 Battery
Dell Latitude E6410 ATG BatteryGenerally, the top three presidents are rated as 1) Lincoln; 2) George Washington; and 3) Franklin D. Roosevelt, although Lincoln and Washington, and Washington and Roosevelt, occasionally are reversed.[269] Dell Latitude E6420 Battery
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President Lincoln's assassination made him a national martyr and endowed him with a recognition of mythic proportion. Lincoln was viewed by abolitionists as a champion for human liberty. Republicans linked Lincoln's name to their party. Many, though not all, in the South considered Lincoln as a man of outstanding ability.[270] Dell Latitude E6420 ATG Battery
The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum focuses on Lincoln scholarship and popular interpretation
Schwartz argues that Lincoln's reputation grew slowly in the late 19th century until the Progressive Era (1900–1920s) when he emerged as one of the most venerated heroes in American history,
Dell Latitude E6400 ATG Battery with even white Southerners in agreement. The high point came in 1922 with the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial on the Mall in Washington.[271] In the New Deal era liberals honored Lincoln not so much as the self-made man or the great war president, Dell Latitude E6510 Battery
Dell Latitude E6520 Batterybut as the advocate of the common man who doubtless would have supported the welfare state. In the Cold War years, Lincoln's image shifted to emphasize the symbol of freedom who brought hope to those oppressed by communist regimes.[272] Dell Inspiron 14V N4030D battery
By the 1970s Lincoln had become a hero to political conservatives[273] for his intense nationalism, support for business, his insistence on stopping the spread of human bondage, his acting in terms of Lockean and Burkean principles on behalf of both liberty and tradition, and his devotion to the principles of the Founding Fathers.[2Dell Inspiron 14V N4030 battery Dell Vostro a90n battery74][275][276] As a Whig activist, Lincoln was a spokesman for business interests, favoring high tariffs, banks, internal improvements, and railroads in opposition to the agrarian Democrats.[277] Dell Inspiron 1320 batteryWilliam C. Harris found that Lincoln's "reverence for the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, the laws under it, and the preservation of the Republic and its institutions undergirded and strengthened his conservatism.".[27 Dell Inspiron XPS battery Dell Inspiron 1320n battery8] James G. Randall emphasizes his tolerance and especially his moderation "in his preference for orderly progress, his distrust of dangerous agitation, and his reluctance toward ill digested schemes of reform." Dell Inspiron 9100 batteryRandall concludes that, "he was conservative in his complete avoidance of that type of so-called 'radicalism' which involved abuse of the South, hatred for the slaveholder, Dell Latitude D410 batterythirst for vengeance, partisan plotting, and ungenerous demands that Southern institutions be transformed overnight by outsiders."[279]
By the late 1960s, liberals, such as historian Lerone Bennett, were having second thoughts, especially regarding Lincoln's views on racial issues.[2 Dell Studio 1458 battery0][281] Bennett won wide attention when he called Lincoln a white supremacist in 1968.[282] He noted that Lincoln used ethnic slurs, told jokes that ridiculed blacks, insisted he opposed social equality, and proposed sending freed slaves to another country. 8 Dell Studio 1457 batteryDefenders, such as authors Dirck and Cashin, retorted that he was not as bad as most politicians of his day;[283] and that he was a "moral visionary" who deftly advanced the abolitionist cause, as fast as politically possible.[284] The emphasis shifted away from Lincoln-the-emancipator to an argument that blacks had freed themselves from slavery, Dell Latitude D430 battery Dell Studio 1450 battery or at least were responsible for pressuring the government on emancipation.[285][286] Historian Barry Schwartz wrote in 2009 that Lincoln's image suffered "erosion, fading prestige, benign ridicule," in the late 20th century.[2 Dell Latitude D420 battery7] On the other hand, Donald opined in his 1996 biography that Lincoln was distinctly endowed with the personality trait of negative capability, defined by the poet John Keats and attributed to extraordinary leaders who were "content in the midst of uncertainties and doubts, and not compelled toward fact or reason."[288] Dell Inspiron 14VR battery
Memorials
Main articles: Memorials to Abraham Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln cultural depictions
Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Lincoln appears on the penny and the $5 bill, and on many postage stamps. He has been memorialized in many town, city, and county names,[289] including the capital of Nebraska.
The most famous and most visited memorials are the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.; Lincoln's sculpture on Mount Rushmore;[298 Dell Inspiron 14V battery0] Ford's Theatre and Petersen House (where he died) in Washington and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, located in Springfield, Illinois, not far from Lincoln's home and his tomb.[291][292] Dell Inspiron 14V N4010 battery
Barry Schwartz, a sociologist who has examined America's cultural memory, argues that in the 1930s and 1940s, the memory of Abraham Lincoln was practically sacred and provided the nation with "a moral symbol inspiring and guiding American life." During the Great Depression, he argues, Lincoln served "as a means for seeing the world's disappointments, Dell Inspiron 14V N4010D battery for making its sufferings not so much explicable as meaningful." Franklin D. Roosevelt, preparing America for war, used the words of the Civil War president to clarify the threat posed by Germany and Japan. Americans asked, Dell Inspiron 14V N4020 battery"What would Lincoln do?"[293] However, he also finds that since World War II, Lincoln's symbolic power has lost relevance, and this "fading hero is symptomatic of fading confidence in national greatness."[294Dell Inspiron 14V N4020D battery] He suggested that postmodernism and multiculturalism have diluted greatness as a concept.
The American Civil War (ACW), also known as the War between the States or simply the Civil War (see naming), was a civil war fought from 1861 to 1865 between the United States (the "Union" or the "North") and several[3] Southern slave states that declared their secession and formed the Confederate States of America (the "Confederacy" or the "South"). Dell inspiron 700M batteryThe war had its origin in the fractious issue of slavery, especially the extension of slavery into the western territories.[4] Foreign powers did not intervene. Dell inspiron 640M batteryAfter four years of bloody combat that left over 600,000 soldiers dead and destroyed much of the South's infrastructure, the Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished, and the difficult Reconstruction process of restoring national unity and guaranteeing rights to the freed slaves began. Dell inspiron 630M battery
In the 1860 presidential election, Republicans, led by Abraham Lincoln, opposed expanding slavery into United States' territories. Lincoln won, but before his inauguration on March 4, 1861, seven slave states with cotton-based economies formed the Confederacy. Dell Inspiron 1570n battery Dell inspiron 500M battery Dell inspiron 600M batteryOutgoing Democratic President James Buchanan and the incoming Republicans rejected secession as illegal. Lincoln's inaugural address declared his administration would not initiate civil war. Eight remaining slave states continued to reject calls for secession. Confederate forces seized numerous federal forts within territory claimed by the Confederacy. Dell Inspiron 15z battery Dell Inspiron 1570 batteryA Peace Conference failed to find a compromise, and both sides prepared for war. The Confederates assumed that European countries were so dependent on "King Cotton" that they would intervene; none did and none recognized the new Confederate States of America. Dell Inspiron 1470n battery
Hostilities began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces fired upon Fort Sumter, a key fort held by Union troops in South Carolina. Lincoln called for each state to provide troops to retake the fort; consequently, four more slave states joined the Confederacy, Dell Inspiron 1470 battery bringing their total to eleven. The Union soon controlled the border states and established a naval blockade that crippled the southern economy. The Eastern Theater was inconclusive in 1861–62. The autumn 1862 Confederate campaign into Maryland (a Union state) Dell Inspiron 14z batteryended with Confederate retreat at the Battle of Antietam, dissuading British intervention.[5 Dell Inspiron Mini 10v battery] Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which made ending slavery a war goal.[6] To the west, by summer 1862 the Union destroyed the Confederate river navy, then much of their western armies, and the Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River. Dell Inspiron mini 1011v battery In 1863, Robert E. Lee's Confederate incursion north ended at the Battle of Gettysburg. Western successes led to Ulysses S. Grant command of all Union armies in 1864. In the Western Theater, William T. Sherman drove east to capture Atlanta and marched to the sea, Dell Inspiron mini 1011n batterydestroying Confederate infrastructure along the way. The Union marshaled the resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions, and could afford to fight battles of attrition through the Overland Campaign towards Richmond, Dell Inspiron mini 1011 battery the Confederate capital. The defending Confederate army failed, leading to Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. Dell Inspiron mini 1010v battery
The American Civil War was one of the earliest true industrial wars. Railroads, the telegraph, steamships, and mass-produced weapons were employed extensively. The mobilization of civilian factories, mines, shipyards, banks, transportation and food supplies all foreshadowed World War I. It remains the deadliest war in American history, Dell Inspiron mini 1010n battery resulting in the deaths of an estimated 750,000 soldiers[7] and an undetermined number of civilian casualties. Historian John Huddleston estimates the death toll at ten percent of all Northern males 20–45 years old, and 30 percent of all Southern white males aged 18–40.[8] Dell Inspiron mini 1010 battery
Main articles: Origins of the American Civil War, Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War, and History of the United States
The causes of the Civil War were complex, and have been controversial since the war began. The issue has been further complicated by historical revisionists, who have tried to improve the image of the South by lessening the role of slavery.[9] Dell Inspiron mini 10 battery Slavery was the central source of escalating political tension in the 1850s. The Republican Party was determined to prevent any spread of slavery, and many Southern leaders had threatened secession if the Republican candidate, Lincoln, won the 1860 election. Following Lincoln's victory, many Southern whites felt that disunion had become their only option. Dell Inspiron 910 battery Dell Inspiron 11z battery
While not all Southerners saw themselves as fighting to preserve slavery, most of the officers and over a third of the rank and file in Lee's army had close family ties to slavery. To Northerners, in contrast, the motivation was primarily to preserve the Union, not to abolish slavery.[1 Dell Inspiron mini 9 battery0] Abraham Lincoln consistently made preserving the Union the central goal of the war, though he increasingly saw slavery as a crucial issue and made ending it an additional goal.[ Dell Inspiron mini 910 battery1] Lincoln's decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation angered both Peace Democrats ("Copperheads") and War Democrats, but energized most Republicans.[121Dell Vostro a90 battery Dell Inspiron mini 9n battery] By warning that free blacks would flood the North, Democrats made gains in the 1862 elections, but they did not gain control of Congress. The Republicans' counterargument that slavery was the mainstay of the enemy steadily gained support, Dell Studio 14zn battery with the Democrats losing decisively in the 1863 elections in the northern state of Ohio when they tried to resurrect anti-black sentiment.[13]
Slavery
Main article: Slavery in the United States
The slavery issue was primarily about whether the system of slavery was an anachronistic evil that was incompatible with Republicanism in the United States, or a state system protected by the Constitution. The strategy of the anti-slavery forces was to stop the expansion and thus put slavery on a path to gradual extinction. To the white South, Dell Studio 14z batterythis strategy trampled their Constitutional rights.[14] Slavery was gradually phased out of existence in the North and was fading in the border states and urban areas, but expanded in highly profitable cotton states of the Deep South. Dell Studio 1440n battery
A New Orleans woman and the child she held in slavery, 1850
Man whipped; the guilty overseer was fired.[15][16]
Despite compromises in 1820 and 1850, the slavery issues exploded in the 1850s. Causes include controversy over admitting Missouri as a slave state in 1820, the acquisition of Texas as a slave state in 1845 and the status of slavery in western territories won as a result of the Mexican–American War and the resulting Compromise of 1850.[1 Dell Studio 1440 battery7] Irreconcilable disagreements over slavery ended the Whig and Know Nothing parties, and split the Democratic Party between North and South, while the new Republican Party angered slavery interests by demanding an end to its expansion. Most observers believed that without expansion slavery would eventually die out; Lincoln argued this in 1845 and 1858.[ Dell Inspiron 1764 battery18] Following the U.S. victory over Mexico, Northerners attempted to exclude slavery from conquered territories in the Wilmot Proviso; it never passed. Northern (and British) readers recoiled in anger at the horrors of slavery as described in the novel and play Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) by abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe.[19 Dell Inspiron 15 battery Dell Inspiron 1564 battery Dell Inspiron 17 battery
Meanwhile, the South of the 1850s saw an increasing number of slaves leave the border states through sale, manumission and escape. During this same period, slave-holding border states had more free African-Americans and European immigrants than the lower South, which increased Southern fears that slavery was threatened with rapid extinction in this area.[20] Dell Inspiron 1464 battery] With tobacco and cotton wearing out the soil, the South believed it needed to expand slavery.[21] The Deep South had advocates arguing to reopen the international slave trade to populate territory that was to be newly opened to slavery.[22] Southern demands for a slave code to ensure slavery in the territories repeatedly split the Democratic Party between North and South by widening margins.[23 Dell Inspiron 14 battery
To settle the dispute over slavery expansion, Abolitionists and proslavery elements sent their partisans into Kansas, both using ballots and bullets. In the 1850s, a miniature civil war in Bleeding Kansas led pro-South Presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan to attempt a forced admission of Kansas as a slave state. Dell Inspiron 1750 battery The 1857 Congressional rejection of the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution was the first multi-party solid-North vote, and that solid vote was anti-slavery to support the democratic majority voting in the Kansas Territory.[24] ] Dell Studio 1745 battery Dell Studio 1747 battery Dell Inspiron 1440 battery Violence on behalf of Southern honor reached the floor of the Senate when a Southern Congressmen, Preston Brooks, physically assaulted Republican Senator Charles Sumner when he ridiculed prominent slaveholders as pimps for slavery.[25] Dell Studio 1749 battery
Slaves posed planting sweet potatoes by a waiting cart
Slaves returning at sundown after the day picking cotton
The earlier political party structure failed to make accommodation among sectional differences. Disagreements over slavery caused the Whig and "Know-Nothing" parties to collapse. In 1860, the last national political party, the Democratic Party, Dell Studio 17 batterysplit along sectional lines. Anti-slavery Northerners mobilized in 1860 behind moderate Abraham Lincoln because he was most likely to carry the doubtful western states. In 1857, the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision ended the Congressional compromise for Popular Sovereignty in Kansas. Dell Studio XPS 1647 batteryAccording to the court, slavery in the territories was a property right of any settler, regardless of the majority there. Chief Justice Taney's decision said that slaves were "so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect". Dell Studio XPS 1640 battery Dell Studio XPS 1645 battery The decision overturned the Missouri Compromise which banned slavery in territory north of the 36°30' parallel.[26] Dell Studio XPS 16 battery
Republicans denounced the Dred Scott decision and promised to overturn it; Abraham Lincoln warned that the next Dred Scott decision could threaten the Northern states with slavery. The Republican party platform called slavery "a national evil", and Lincoln believed it would die a natural death if it were contained.[2 Dell studio xps 13 battery] The Democrat Stephen A. Douglas developed the Freeport Doctrine to appeal to North and South. Congress could not decide either for or against slavery before a territory was settled. Dell studio xps 1340 batteryThe anti-slavery majority in Kansas could stop slavery with its own local laws if their police laws did not protect slavery introduction.[28] Most 1850 political battles followed the arguments of Lincoln and Douglas, focusing on the issue of slavery expansion in the territories.[29] 7 Dell Vostro 1720 battery
But political debate was cut short throughout the South with Northern abolitionist John Brown's 1859 raid at Harpers Ferry Armory in an attempt to incite slave insurrections. The Southern political defense of slavery transformed into widespread expansion of local militias for armed defense of their "peculiar" domestic institution.[30] Dell xps m1710 battery Dell xps m1730 battery Dell Vostro 1710 battery Lincoln's assessment of the political issue for the 1860 elections was that, "This question of Slavery was more important than any other; indeed, so much more important has it become that no other national question can even get a hearing just at present."[31] The Republicans gained majorities in both House and Senate for the first time since Democrats in the 1856 elections, they were to be seated in numbers which Lincoln might use to govern, Dell xps m1330 battery Dell xps m1530 battery a national parliamentary majority even before pro-slavery House and Senate seats vacated.[32] Meanwhile, Southern Vice President, Alexander Stephens, in the Cornerstone Speech, declared the new confederate "Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—Dell xps m1210 batteryAfrican slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution."[33]
Considering the relative weight given to causes of the Civil War by contemporary actors, historians such as Chandra Manning argue that both Union and Confederate fighting soldiers believed slavery to be the cause of the Civil War. Dell latitude d830 batteryUnion men mainly believed the war was to bring emancipation to the slaves. Confederates fought to protect southern society, and slavery as an integral part of it Dell latitude d820 battery4] Addressing the causes, Eric Foner would relate a historical context with multidimensional political, social and economic variables. The several causes united in the moment by a consolidating nationalism. A social movement that was individualist, .[3 Dell latitude d620 battery Dell latitude d630 batteryegalitarian and perfectionist grew to a political democratic majority attacking slavery, and slavery's defense in the Southern pre-industrial traditional society brought the two sides to war.[35] Dell inspiron e1505 battery Dell inspiron e1705 battery
Sectionalism
Status of the states, 1861.
States that seceded before April 15, 1861
States that seceded after April 15, 1861
Union states that permitted slavery
Union states that banned slavery
Territories
Sectionalism refers to the different economies, social structure, customs and political values of the North and South.[36][37] It increased steadily between 1800 and 1860 as the North, which phased slavery out of existence, Dell inspiron 9400 batteryindustrialized, urbanized and built prosperous farms, while the deep South concentrated on plantation agriculture based on slave labor, together with subsistence farming for the poor whites. The South expanded into rich new lands in the Southwest (from Alabama to Texas).[38] Dell inspiron 9300 battery
However, slavery declined in the border states and could barely survive in cities and industrial areas (it was fading out in cities such as Baltimore, Louisville, and St. Louis), so a South based on slavery was rural and non-industrial. On the other hand, as the demand for cotton grew, Dell inspiron 9200 batterythe price of slaves soared. Historians have debated whether economic differences between the industrial Northeast and the agricultural South helped cause the war. Most historians now disagree with the economic determinism of historian Charles Beard in the 1920s and emphasize that Northern and Southern economies were largely complementary.[39] Dell inspiron 710M battery Dell inspiron 6400 battery
Fears of slave revolts and abolitionist propaganda made the South militantly hostile to abolitionism.[40][41] Southerners complained that it was the North that was changing, and was prone to new "isms", while the South remained true to historic republican values of the Founding Fathers (many of whom owned slaves, Dell inspiron 6000 battery including Washington, Jefferson, and Madison). Lincoln said that Republicans were following the tradition of the framers of the Constitution (including the Northwest Ordinance and the Missouri Compromise) by preventing expansion of slavery.[42 Dell XPS M2010 battery
The issue of accepting slavery (in the guise of rejecting slave-owning bishops and missionaries) split the largest religious denominations (the Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian churches) into separate Northern and Southern denominations.[4] Dell Vostro A860n battery3] Industrialization meant that seven European immigrants out of eight settled in the North. The movement of twice as many whites leaving the South for the North as vice versa contributed to the South's defensive-aggressive political behavior.[44 Dell Vostro A840 battery Dell Vostro A860 battery
States' rights
Main article: States' rights
Marais des Cygnes massacre of anti-slavery Kansans. May 19, 1858.
Everyone agreed that states had certain rights—but did those rights carry over when a citizen left that state? The Southern position was that citizens of every state had the right to take their property anywhere in the U.S. and not have it taken away—specifically they could bring their slaves anywhere and they would remain slaves. ] Dell Vostro 1088n batteryNortherners rejected this "right" because it would violate the right of a free state to outlaw slavery within its borders. Republicans committed to ending the expansion of slavery were among those opposed to any such right to bring slaves and slavery into the free states and territories. Dell Vostro 1088 battery The Dred Scott Supreme Court decision of 1857 bolstered the Southern case within territories, and angered the North.[45 Dell Vostro 1015n battery
Secondly, the South argued that each state had the right to secede—leave the Union—at any time, that the Constitution was a "compact" or agreement among the states. Northerners (including President Buchanan) rejected that notion as opposed to the will of the Founding Fathers who said they were setting up a "perpetual union".[4] Dell Vostro 1015 battery5] Historian James McPherson writes concerning states' rights and other non-slavery explanations:
While one or more of these interpretations remain popular among the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other Southern heritage groups, few professional historians now subscribe to them. Of all these interpretations, the state's-rights argument is perhaps the weakest. Dell Vostro 1014n batteryIt fails to ask the question, state's rights for what purpose? State's rights, or sovereignty, was always more a means than an end, an instrument to achieve a certain goal more than a principle.[46] Dell Vostro 1014 battery
Protectionism
Main articles: King Cotton, Protectionism in the United States, and Infant industry
New Orleans the largest cotton exporting port for New England and Great Britain textile mills, shipping Mississippi River Valley goods from North, South and Border states.
Historically, southern slave-holding states, because of their low cost manual labor, had little perceived need for mechanization, and supported having the right to sell cotton and purchase manufactured goods from any nation. Dell Inspiron 1410 batteryNorthern states, which had heavily invested in their still-nascent manufacturing, could not compete with the full-fledged industries of Europe in offering high prices for cotton imported from the South and low prices for manufactured exports in return. Dell Vostro 1520 batteryFor this reason, northern manufacturing interests supported tariffs and protectionism while southern planters demanded free trade. Dell Vostro 2510 battery
The Democrats in Congress, controlled by Southerners, wrote the tariff laws in the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, and kept reducing rates so that the 1857 rates were the lowest since 1816. The South had no complaints but the low rates angered Northern industrialists and factory workers, especially in Pennsylvania, who demanded protection for their growing iron industry. Dell Vostro 1510 batteryThe Whigs and Republicans complained because they favored high tariffs to stimulate industrial growth, and Republicans called for an increase in tariffs in the 1860 election. The increases were finally enacted in 1861 after Southerners resigned their seats in Congress.[47][48 Dell Vostro 1320 battery
Historians in the 1920s emphasized the tariff issue but since the 1950s they have minimized it, noting that few Southerners in 1860–61 said it was of central importance to them. Some secessionist documents do mention the tariff issue, though not nearly as often as the preservation of slavery. ] Dell Vostro 1310 battery
Slave power and free soil
Main article: Slave Power
Antislavery forces in the North identified the "Slave Power" as a direct threat to republican values. They argued that rich slave owners were using political power to take control of the Presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court, thus threatening the rights of the citizens of the North.[49] Dell Latitude E4300 battery
"Free soil" was a Northern demand that the new lands opening up in the west be available to independent yeoman farmers and not be bought out by rich slave owners who would buy up the best land and work it with slaves, forcing the white farmers onto marginal lands. This was the basis of the Free Soil Party of 1848, and a main theme of the Republican Party.[50 Dell Inspiron Mini 12 battery] Free Soilers and Republicans demanded a homestead law that would give government land to settlers; it was defeated by Southerners who feared it would attract to the west European immigrants and poor Southern whites.[51] Dell Inspiron 1210 battery
Territorial crisis
Further information: Slave and free states
Between 1803 and 1854, the United States achieved a vast expansion of territory through purchase, negotiation, and conquest.[52] Of the states carved out of these territories by 1845, all had entered the union as slave states: Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Florida and Texas, as well as the southern portions of Alabama and Mississippi.[5 Dell Studio 1737 battery3] And with the conquest of northern Mexico, including California, in 1848, slaveholding interests looked forward to the institution flourishing in these lands as well. Southerners also anticipated garnering slaves and slave states in Cuba and Central America.[54] Dell Studio 1558 battery Dell Studio 1735 battery [55] Northern free soil interests vigorously sought to curtail any further expansion of slave soil. It was these territorial disputes that the proslavery and antislavery forces collided over.[56][57] Dell Studio 1555 battery Dell Studio 1557 battery
The existence of slavery in the southern states was far less politically polarizing than the explosive question of the territorial expansion of the institution westward.[58] Moreover, Americans were informed by two well-established readings of the Constitution regarding human bondage: first, that the slave states had complete autonomy over the institution within their boundaries, Dell Studio 1537 batteryand second, that the domestic slave trade – trade among the states – was immune to federal interference.[59][60] The only feasible strategy available to attack slavery was to restrict its expansion into the new territories.[61Dell Studio 1535 battery Dell Studio 1536 battery] Slaveholding interests fully grasped the danger that this strategy posed to them.[62][63] Both the South and the North drew the same conclusion: "The power to decide the question of slavery for the territories was the power to determine the future of slavery itself."[64][65]
Sen. Stephen Douglas, author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
Sen. John J. Crittenden, author of the Crittenden Compromise bill of 1860
By 1860, four doctrines had emerged to answer the question of federal control in the territories, and they all claimed to be sanctioned by the Constitution, implicitly or explicitly. Dell Latitude 2100 battery66] Two of the "conservative" doctrines emphasized the written text and historical precedents of the founding document (specifically, the Northwest Ordinance and the Missouri Compromise), while the other two doctrines developed arguments that transcended the Constitution.[67] Dell Vostro 1400 battery
The first of these "conservative" theories, represented by the Constitutional Union Party, argued that the historical designation of free and slave apportionments in territories should become a Constitutional mandate. The Crittenden Compromise of 1860 was an expression of this view.[68] Dell Inspiron 1420 battery
The second doctrine of Congressional preeminence, championed by Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party, insisted that the Constitution did not bind legislators to a policy of balance – that slavery could be excluded altogether in a territory at the discretion of Congress [68][6 Dell Vostro 1700 battery9] – with one caveat: the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment must apply. In other words, Congress could restrict human bondage, but never establish it.[67] The Wilmot Proviso announced this position in 1846.[68] Dell Vostro 1500 battery
Of the two doctrines that rejected federal authority, one was articulated by northern Democrat of Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas, and the other by southern Democrats Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and Vice-President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky.[67] Dell Inspiron 1721 battery
Douglas proclaimed the doctrine of territorial or "popular" sovereignty, which declared that the settlers in a territory had the same rights as states in the Union to establish or disestablish slavery – a purely local matter.[67] Congress, having created the territory, Dell Inspiron 1720 batterywas barred, according to Douglas, from exercising any authority in domestic matters. To do so would violate historic traditions of self-government, implicit in the US Constitution.[70] The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 legislated this doctrine. Dell Inspiron 1521 battery
The fourth in this quartet is the theory of state sovereignty ("states' rights"),[70] also known as the "Calhoun doctrine",[71] named after the South Carolinian political theorist and statesman John C. Calhoun.[72] Dell Inspiron 1520 battery Rejecting the arguments for federal authority or self-government, state sovereignty would empower states to promote the expansion of slavery as part of the Federal Union under the US Constitution – and not merely as an argument for secession.[73][74] The basic premise was that all authority regarding matters of slavery in the territories resided in each state.
The role of the federal government was merely to enable the implementation of state laws when residents of the states entered the territories.[75Sony SVS13AA11L Battery
] The Calhoun doctrine asserted that the federal government in the territories was only the agent of the several sovereign states, and hence incapable of forbidding the bringing into any territory of anything that was legal property in any state. State sovereignty, in other words, gave the laws of the slaveholding states extra-jurisdictional effect.[76] Sony SVS131A11L Battery
"States' rights" was an ideology formulated and applied as a means of advancing slave state interests through federal authority.[77] As historian Thomas L. Krannawitter points out, "[T]he Southern demand for federal slave protection represented a demand for an unprecedented expansion of federal power." [78][79] Sony SVS131B11L Battery
By 1860, these four doctrines comprised the major ideologies presented to the American public on the matters of slavery, the territories and the US Constitution.[80]
National elections
Beginning in the American Revolution and accelerating after the War of 1812, Sony PCG-4121DL Battery
Sony PCG-41414L Battery the people of the United States grew in their sense of country as an important example to the world of a national republic of political liberty and personal rights. Previous regional independence movements such as the Greek revolt in the Ottoman Empire, division and redivision in the Latin American political map, Sony PCG-4121EL Battery
Sony PCG-41413L Battery and the British-French Crimean triumph leading to an interest in redrawing Europe along cultural differences, all conspired to make for a time of upheaval and uncertainty about the basis of the nation-state. In the world of 19th century self-made Americans, growing in prosperity, Sony PCG-4121FL Battery
Sony PCG-41412L Battery population and expanding westward, "freedom" could mean personal liberty or property rights. The unresolved difference would cause failure—first in their political institutions, then in their civil life together. Sony PCG-4121GL Battery
Nationalism and honor
Abraham Lincoln
16th U.S. President (1861–1865)
Nationalism was a powerful force in the early 19th century, with famous spokesmen such as Andrew Jackson and Daniel Webster. While practically all Northerners supported the Union, Southerners were split between those loyal to the entire United States (called "unionists") and those loyal primarily to the southern region and then the Confederacy.[81Sony PCG-41211L Battery
Sony PCG-41411L Battery] C. Vann Woodward said of the latter group, "A great slave society ... had grown up and miraculously flourished in the heart of a thoroughly bourgeois and partly puritanical republic. It had renounced its bourgeois origins and elaborated and painfully rationalized its institutional,
Sony PCG-41218L Battery legal, metaphysical, and religious defenses ... When the crisis came it chose to fight. It proved to be the death struggle of a society, which went down in ruins."[82] Perceived insults to Southern collective honor included the enormous popularity of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)[83] and the actions of abolitionist John Brown in trying to incite a slave rebellion in 1859.[84]
While the South moved toward a Southern nationalism, leaders in the North were also becoming more nationally minded, and rejected any notion of splitting the Union. The Republican national electoral platform of 1860 warned that Republicans regarded disunion as treason and would not tolerate it: "We denounce those threats of disunion . Sony PCG-41212L Battery
Sony PCG-41216L Battery.. as denying the vital principles of a free government, and as an avowal of contemplated treason, which it is the imperative duty of an indignant people sternly to rebuke and forever silence."[8
Sony PCG-41215L Battery5] The South ignored the warnings: Southerners did not realize how ardently the North would fight to hold the Union together.[86]
Lincoln's election
Main article: United States presidential election, 1860
The election of Lincoln in November 1860 was the final trigger for secession.[87] Efforts at compromise, including the "Corwin Amendment" and the "Crittenden Compromise", failed. Southern leaders feared that Lincoln would stop the expansion of slavery and put it on a course toward extinction. Sony PCG-41213L Battery
The slave states, which had already become a minority in the House of Representatives, were now facing a future as a perpetual minority in the Senate and Electoral College against an increasingly powerful North. Before Lincoln took office in March 1861, seven slave states had declared their secession and joined to form the Confederacy. Sony SVS13AB1GL Battery
Secession and war begins
Resolves and developments
Secession of South Carolina
See also: Antebellum South Carolina
South Carolina did more to advance nullification and secession than any other Southern state. South Carolina adopted the "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union" on December 24, 1860. Sony SVS131C1DL Battery
Sony PCG-91211L BatteryIt argued for states' rights for slave owners in the South, but contained a complaint about states' rights in the North in the form of opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act, claiming that Northern states were not fulfilling their federal obligations under the Constitution. All the alleged violations of the rights of Southern states were related to slavery. Sony SVS131C24L Battery
Secession winter
Before Lincoln took office, seven states had declared their secession from the Union. They established a Southern government, the Confederate States of America on February 4, 1861.[88] They took control of federal forts and other properties within their boundaries with little resistance from outgoing President James Buchanan, Sony SVS131E1DL Battery
Sony PCG-71914L Battery whose term ended on March 4, 1861. Buchanan said that the Dred Scott decision was proof that the South had no reason for secession, and that the Union "was intended to be perpetual", but that "the power by force of arms to compel a State to remain in the Union" was not among the "enumerated powers granted to Congress".[89Sony SVS131G1DL Battery
Sony PCG-71913L Battery] One quarter of the U.S. Army—the entire garrison in Texas—was surrendered in February 1861 to state forces by its commanding general, David E. Twiggs, who then joined the Confederacy.
As Southerners resigned their seats in the Senate and the House, Republicans were able to pass bills for projects that had been blocked by Southern Senators before the war, including the Morrill Tariff, land grant colleges (the Morill Act), Sony SVS151C1GL Battery
a Homestead Act, a transcontinental railroad (the Pacific Railway Acts), the National Banking Act and the authorization of United States Notes by the Legal Tender Act of 1862. The Revenue Act of 1861 introduced the income tax to help finance the war. Sony SVS151C2DL Battery
States align
Confederate states
Main article: Confederate States of America
Jefferson Davis, President of Confederacy (1861–1865)
Seven Deep South cotton states seceded by February 1861, starting with South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. These seven states formed the Confederate States of America (February 4, 1861), Sony SVS151E1GL Battery
with Jefferson Davis as president, and a governmental structure closely modeled on the U.S. Constitution.
Following the attack on Fort Sumter, President Lincoln called for a volunteer army from each state. Within two months, an additional four Southern slave states declared their secession and joined the Confederacy: Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee. The northwestern portion of Virginia subsequently seceded from Virginia, Sony PCG-61A11L Battery
joining the Union as the new state of West Virginia on June 20, 1863. By the end of 1861, Missouri and Kentucky were effectively under Union control, with Confederate state governments in exile.
Among the ordinances of secession passed by the individual states, those of three – Texas, Alabama, and Virginia – specifically mentioned the plight of the 'slaveholding states' at the hands of northern abolitionists.
Sony PCG-71912L BatteryThe rest make no mention of the slavery issue, and are often brief announcements of the dissolution of ties by the legislatures,[90] however at least four states – South Carolina,[91] Mississippi,[92
Sony PCG-71911L Battery] Georgia,[93] and Texas[94] – also passed lengthy and detailed explanations of their causes for secession, all of which laid the blame squarely on the influence over the northern states of the movement to abolish slavery, something regarded as a Constitutional right by the slaveholding states.[95]
Union states
Main article: Union (American Civil War)
Twenty-three states remained loyal to the Union: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin. During the war,
Nevada and West Virginia joined as new states of the Union. Tennessee and Louisiana were returned to Union military control early in the war.
The territories of Colorado, Dakota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Washington fought on the Union side. Several slave-holding Native American tribes supported the Confederacy, giving the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) a small, bloody civil war.[96][97][98]
Border states
Main article: Border states (American Civil War)
The border states in the Union were West Virginia (which separated from Virginia and became a new state), and four of the five northernmost slave states (Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, and Kentucky).
Maryland had numerous pro-Confederate officials who tolerated anti-Union rioting in Baltimore and the burning of bridges. Lincoln responded with martial law and sent in militia units from the North.[99] Before the Confederate government realized what was happening, Sony PCG-61A13L Battery
Sony PCG-61911L Battery Lincoln had seized firm control of Maryland and the District of Columbia, by arresting all the prominent secessionists and holding them without trial (they were later released).
The Union: blue, yellow (slave);
The Confederacy: brown
*territories in light shades; control of Confederate territories disputed
In Missouri, an elected convention on secession voted decisively to remain within the Union. When pro-Confederate Governor Claiborne F. Jackson called out the state militia, it was attacked by federal forces under General Nathaniel Lyon, Sony PCG-61A14L Battery
Sony PCG-61813L Battery who chased the governor and the rest of the State Guard to the southwestern corner of the state. (See also: Missouri secession). In the resulting vacuum, the convention on secession reconvened and took power as the Unionist provisional government of Missouri.[100]
Kentucky did not secede; for a time, it declared itself neutral. When Confederate forces entered the state in September 1861, neutrality ended and the state reaffirmed its Union status, while trying to maintain slavery. Sony PCG-71C11L Battery
Sony PCG-71C12L BatteryDuring a brief invasion by Confederate forces, Confederate sympathizers organized a secession convention, inaugurated a governor, and gained recognition from the Confederacy. The rebel government soon went into exile and never controlled Kentucky.[101] Sony SVE141C11L Battery
After Virginia's secession, a Unionist government in Wheeling asked 48 counties to vote on an ordinance to create a new state on October 24, 1861. A voter turnout of 34% approved the statehood bill (96% approving).[10
Sony SVE171G112 Battery2] The inclusion of 24 secessionist counties[103] in the state and the ensuing guerrilla war[104] engaged about 40,000 Federal troops for much of the war.[105] Congress admitted West Virginia to the Union on June 20, 1863. West Virginia provided about 20,000–22,000 soldiers to both the Confederacy and the Union.[106] Sony SVE141D11L Battery
A Unionist secession attempt occurred in East Tennessee, but was suppressed by the Confederacy, which arrested over 3,000 men suspected of being loyal to the Union. They were held without trial.[107]
Beginning the war
For more details on this topic, see Battle of Fort Sumter.
Lincoln's victory in the presidential election of 1860 triggered South Carolina's declaration of secession from the Union in December, and six more states did so by February 1861. A pre-war February Peace Conference of 1861 met in Washington, Lincoln sneaking into town to stay in the Conference's hotel its last three days.
Sony SVE151J11L Battery The attempt failed at resolving the crisis, but the remaining eight slave states rejected pleas to join the Confederacy following a two-to-one no-vote in Virginia's First Secessionist Convention on April 4, 1861.[108] Sony SVE141L11L Battery
Lincoln's policy
Since December, secessionists with and without state forces seized Federal Court Houses, U.S. Treasury mints and post offices. Southern governors ordered militia mobilization, seized most of the federal forts and cannon within their boundaries and U.S. armories of infantry weapons. The governors in big-state Republican strongholds of Massachusetts, Sony SVE151E11L Battery
Sony SVE151G11L BatteryNew York, and Pennsylvania quietly began buying weapons and training militia units themselves.[109] President Buchanan protested seizure of Federal property, but made no military response apart from a failed attempt to resupply Fort Sumter using the ship Star of the West, which was fired upon by South Carolina forces and turned back before it reached the fort.[108] Sony PCG-61713L Battery
Merchant Star of the West intended to resupply Ft. Sumter. Lincoln's policy to hold federal property was unlike Buchanan's
On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as President. In his inaugural address, he argued that the Constitution was a more perfect union than the earlier Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, that it was a binding contract, and called any secession "legally void".[110] He had no intent to invade Southern states, Sony PCG-91111L Battery
nor did he intend to end slavery where it existed, but that he would use force to maintain possession of federal property. The government would make no move to recover post offices, and if resisted, mail delivery would end at state lines. Where popular conditions did not allow peaceful enforcement of Federal law, Sony PCG-91112L Battery
Sony PCG-61317L Battery U.S. Marshals and Judges would be withdrawn. No mention was made of bullion lost from U.S. mints in Louisiana, Georgia and North Carolina. In Lincoln's Inaugural, U.S. policy would only collect import duties at its ports, Sony PCG-71312L Battery
Sony PCG-61316L Battery there could be no serious injury to justify revolution in the politics of four years. His speech closed with a plea for restoration of the bonds of union.[111]
The South sent delegations to Washington and offered to pay for the federal properties and enter into a peace treaty with the United States. Lincoln rejected any negotiations with Confederate agents because he claimed the Confederacy was not a legitimate government, and that making any treaty with it would be tantamount to recognition of it as a sovereign government.[112]
Sony PCG-61315L Battery Secretary of State William Seward who at that time saw himself as the real governor or "prime minister" behind the throne of the inexperienced Lincoln, engaged in unauthorized and indirect negotiations that failed.[11Sony PCG-71311L Battery
2] President Lincoln was determined to hold all remaining Union-occupied forts in the Confederacy, Fort Monroe in Virginia, in Florida, Fort Pickens, Fort Jefferson, and Fort Taylor, and in the city first passing state Resolves for Secession, Charleston, South Carolina's Fort Sumter.[113]
Battle of Fort Sumter
Main article: Battle of Fort Sumter
Mass meeting April 20, 1861 to support the Government at Washington's equestrian statue in Union Square NYC
Ft. Sumter was located in the middle of the harbor of Charleston, SC where the U.S. forts garrison had withdrawn to avoid incidents with local militias in the streets of the city. Unlike Buchanan who allowed commanders to relinquish possession to avoid bloodshed, Lincoln required Maj. Anderson to hold on until fired upon. Sony PCG-71217L Battery
Sony PCG-61311L BatteryJefferson Davis ordered the surrender of the fort. Anderson gave a conditional reply which the Confederate government rejected, and Davis ordered Beauregard to attack the fort before a relief expedition could arrive. Troops under P. G. T. Beauregard bombarded Fort Sumter on April 12–13, Sony PCG-71313L Battery
forcing its capitulation. On April 15, Lincoln's Secretary of War then called on Governors for 75,000 volunteers to recapture the fort and other federal property.[114]
Northerners rallied behind Lincoln's call for all the states to send troops to recapture the forts and to preserve the Union,[11
Sony PCG-61215L Battery5] citing presidential powers given by the Militia Acts of 1792. With the scale of the rebellion apparently small so far, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers for 90 days.[116] Several Northern governors began to move forces the next day, and Secessionists seized Liberty Arsenal in Liberty, Missouri the next week.[109] Sony PCG-71315L Battery
Sony PCG-61211L Battery Two weeks later, on May 3, 1861, Lincoln called for an additional 42,034 volunteers for a period of three years.[117]
Four states in the middle and upper South had repeatedly rejected Confederate overtures, but now Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina refused to send forces against their neighbors, declared their secession, and joined the Confederacy. To reward Virginia, the Confederate capital was moved to Richmond.[118] Sony PCG-71316L Battery
The War
See also: List of American Civil War battles and Military leadership in the American Civil War
The Civil War was a contest marked by the ferocity and frequency of battle. Over four years, 237 named battles were fought,
Sony PCG-71216L Battery and many more minor actions and skirmishes. In the scales of world military history, both sides fighting were characterized by their bitter intensity and high casualties. "The American Civil War was to prove one of the most ferocious wars ever fought". Without geographic objectives, the only target for each side was the enemy's soldier.[119] Sony PCG-71317L Battery
Mobilization
As the first seven states began organizing a Confederacy in Montgomery, the entire US army numbered 16,000, however Northern governors had begun to mobilize their militias.[120] The Confederate Congress authorized the new nation up to 100,000 troops sent by governors as early as February in the opinion of historian E. Merton Coulter. After Fort Sumter, Sony PCG-71318L Battery
Lincoln called out 75,000 three-month volunteers, by May Jefferson Davis was pushing for 100,000 men under arms for one year or the duration, and that was answered in kind by the U.S. Congress.[121] Sony PCG-71211L Battery
In the first year of the war, both sides had far more volunteers than they could effectively train and equip. After the initial enthusiasm faded, reliance on the cohort of young men who came of age every year and wanted to join was not enough. Sony PCG-9Z1L Battery
Sony PCG-8151L Battery Both sides used a draft law—conscription—as a device to encourage or force volunteering; relatively few were actually drafted and served. The Confederacy passed a draft law in April 1862 for young men aged 18 to 35; overseers of slaves, government officials, and clergymen were exempt.[122
Sony PCG-8141L Battery] The U.S. Congress followed in July, authorizing a militia draft within a state when it could not meet its quota with volunteers. European immigrants joined the Union Army in large numbers, including 177,000 born in Germany and 144,000 born in Ireland.[123]
Numbers could not be had without conscription. Here Union soldiers before Marye's Heights, Second Fredericksburg
Confederate losses were not replaced easily. Here Rebel dead overrun at Marye's Heights, reoccupied next day May 4, 1863
When the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in January 1863, ex-slaves were energetically recruited by the states, and used to meet the state quotas. States and local communities offered higher and higher cash bonuses for white volunteers. Sony PCG-7142L Battery
Sony PCG-813L Battery Congress tightened the law in March 1863. Men selected in the draft could provide substitutes or, until mid-1864, pay commutation money. Many eligibles pooled their money to cover the cost of anyone drafted. Families used the substitute provision to select which man should go into the army and which should stay home. There was much evasion and overt resistance to the draft, especially in Catholic areas. Sony PCG-7151L Battery
Sony PCG-7185L Battery The great draft riot in New York City in July 1863 involved Irish immigrants who had been signed up as citizens to swell the machine vote, not realizing it made them liable for the draft.[124] Of the 168,649 men procured for the Union through the draft, 117,986 were substitutes, leaving only 50,663 who had their personal services conscripted.[125] Sony PCG-7152L Battery
North and South, the draft laws were highly unpopular. An estimated 120,000 men evaded conscription in the North, many of them fleeing to Canada, and another 280,000 Northern soldiers deserted during the war,[126][127] along with at least 100,000 Southerners, or about 10% all together.[
Sony PCG-7184L Battery8] However, desertion was a very common event in the 19th century; in the peacetime Army about 15% of the soldiers deserted every year.[129] In the South, many men deserted temporarily to take care of their families,[ 12Sony PCG-7153L Battery
Sony PCG-7183L Battery130] then returned to their units.[131] In the North, "bounty jumpers" enlisted to get the generous bonus, deserted, then went back to a second recruiting station under a different name to sign up again for a second bonus; 141 were caught and executed.[132]
By 1865, the soldiers of the Union and Confederacy had grown to be the "largest and most efficient armies in the world". European observers dismissed them as amateur and unprofessional, but a modern military historian's assessment is that each outmatched the French, Prussian and Russian armies of the time, and but for the Atlantic, would have threatened any of them with defeat.[133] Sony PCG-7154L Battery
Naval war
The small U.S. Navy of 1861 was rapidly enlarged to 6,000 officers and 45,000 men in 1865, with 671 vessels, having a tonnage of 510,396.[134][135] Its mission was to blockade Confederate ports, take control of the river system, defend against Confederate raiders on the high seas, and be ready for a possible war with the British Royal Navy.[13
Sony PCG-7181L Battery6] Meanwhile, the main riverine war was fought in the West, where a series of major rivers gave access to the Confederate heartland, if the U.S. Navy could take control. In the East, the Navy supplied and moved army forces about, and occasionally shelled Confederate installations.
Union blockade
Main articles: Union blockade and Blockade runners of the American Civil War
General Scott's "Anaconda Plan" 1861. Tightening naval blockade, rebels out of Missouri along Mississippi River, Kentucky Unionists sit on the fence, idled cotton industry illustrated in Georgia
By early 1861, General Winfield Scott had devised the Anaconda Plan to win the war with as little bloodshed as possible.[13
Sony PCG-7173L Battery7] Scott argued that a Union blockade of the main ports would weaken the Confederate economy. Lincoln adopted parts of the plan, but he overruled Scott's caution about 90-day volunteers. Public opinion however demanded an immediate attack by the army to capture Richmond.[138
In April 1861, Lincoln announced the Union blockade of all Southern ports; commercial ships could not get insurance and regular traffic ended. The South blundered in embargoing cotton exports in 1861 before the blockade was effective; by the time they realized the mistake it was too late. "King Cotton" was dead, Sony PCG-7162L Battery
as the South could export less than 10% of its cotton. The blockade shut down the ten Confederate seaports with railheads that moved almost all the cotton, especially New Orleans, Mobile, and Charleston. By June 1861, warships were stationed off the principal Southern ports, and a year later nearly 300 ships were in service.[139] Sony PCG-21313L Battery
Confederate countermeasures
The Confederacy responded to the blockade by building or converting more than 130 vessels, including twenty-six ironclads and floating batteries. Only half of these saw active service. Many were equipped with ram bows, creating "ram fever" among Union squadrons wherever they threatened. But in the face of overwhelming Union superiority, they were unsuccessful.[140]
The Confederacy experimented with a submarine, but it did not work well,[141] and with building an ironclad ship, the CSS Virginia based on rebuilding a sunken Union ship the Merrimac. On its first foray on March 8, 1862, the Virginia decimated the Union's wooden fleet, but the next day the first Union ironclad the USS Monitor showed up to challenge it. Sony PCG-31311L Battery
Sony PCG-81314L BatteryThe Battle of the Ironclads was a draw, but it marks the worldwide transition to ironclad warships. The Confederacy lost the Virginia when the ship was scuttled to prevent capture, and the Union built many copies of the Monitor. Lacking the technology to build effective warships, the Confederacy attempted to obtain warships from Britain. Sony PCG-51111L Battery
Blockade runners
British investors built small, very fast, steam-driven blockade runners that traded arms and luxuries brought in from Britain through Bermuda, Cuba, and the Bahamas in return for high-priced cotton.
Sony PCG-81312L Battery The ships were so small that only a small amount of cotton went out. When the Union Navy seized a blockade runner, the ship and cargo were condemned as a Prize of war and sold with the proceeds given to the Navy sailors; the captured crewmen were mostly British and they were simply released.[14 Sony PCG-51113L Battery
2] The Southern economy nearly collapsed during the war. There were multiple reasons for the severe deterioration of food supplies, especially in cities, the failure of Southern railroads, the loss of control of the main rivers, foraging by Northern armies, and the seizure of animals and crops by Confederate armies. Sony PCG-51311L Battery
Sony PCG-81311L BatteryHistorians agree that the blockade was a major factor in ruining the Confederate economy. However, Wise argues that they provided just enough of a lifeline to allow Lee to continue fighting for additional months, thanks to fresh supplies of 400,000 rifles, lead, blankets, and boots that the homefront economy could no longer supply.[143] Sony PCG-51312L Battery
Gunline of nine Union ironclads. South Atlantic Blockading Squadron off Charleston. Continuous blockade of all major ports was sustained by North's overwhelming war production
Economic impact
Surdam argues that the blockade was a powerful weapon that eventually ruined the Southern economy, at the cost of very few lives in combat. Practically, the entire Confederate cotton crop was useless (although was sold to Union traders), Sony PCG-51411L Battery
Sony PCG-81114L Battery costing the Confederacy its main source of income. Critical imports were very scarce and the coastal trade was largely ended as well[144] The measure of the blockade's success was not the few ships that slipped through, Sony PCG-51412L Battery
Sony PCG-81113L Battery but the thousands that never tried it. Merchant ships owned in Europe could not get insurance and were too slow to evade the blockade; they simply stopped calling at Confederate ports.[145]
To fight an offensive war the Confederacy purchased ships from Britain, converted them to warships, and raided American merchants ships in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Insurance rates skyrocketed and the American flag virtually disappeared from international waters. However, the same ships were reflagged with European flags and continued unmolested.[14Sony PCG-51511L Battery
6] After the war, the U.S. demanded that Britain pay for the damage done, and Britain paid the U.S. $15 million in 1871.[147]
Rivers
The 1862 Union strategy called for simultaneous advances along four axes. McClellan would lead the main thrust in Virginia towards Richmond. Ohio forces were to advance through Kentucky into Tennessee, the Missouri Department would drive south along the Mississippi River, and the westernmost attack would originate from Kansas.[148Sony PCG-51513L Battery
]
Clashes on the rivers were melees of ironclads, cottonclads gunboats and rams, complicated by torpedoes and fire rafts
Ulysses Grant used river transport and Andrew Foote's gunboats of the Western Flotilla to threaten the Confederacy's "Gilbraltar of the West" at Columbus, Kentucky. Grant was rebuffed at Belmont, but cut off Columbus. Sony PCG-61412L Battery
Sony PCG-71111L Battery The Confederates, lacking their own gunboats, were forced to retreat and the Union took control of western Kentucky in March 1862.[149]
In addition to ocean-going warships coming up the Mississippi, the Union Navy used timberclads, tinclads, and armored gunboats.
Shipyards at Cairo, Illinois, and St. Louis built new boats or modified steamboats for action.[150] They took control of the Red, Tennessee, Cumberland, Mississippi, and Ohio rivers after victories at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, and supplied Grant's forces as he moved into Tennessee. At Shiloh, (Pittsburg Landing) in Tennessee in April 1862, Sony VPCF115FM battery
Sony VPCF114FX battery the Confederate made a surprise attack that pushed Union forces against the river as night fell. Overnight, the Navy landed additional reinforcements, and Grant counter-attacked. Grant and the Union won a decisive victory – the first battle with the high casualty rates that would repeat over and over.[151] Sony VPCF11JFX battery
Sony VPCF11PFX battery
Memphis fell to Union forces and became a key base for further advances south along the Mississippi River. In April 1862, US Naval forces under Farragut ran past Confederate defenses south of New Orleans. Confederates abandoned the city, which gave the Union a critical anchor in the deep South.[152]
Sony VPCF11HGX batteryNaval forces assisted Grant in his long, complex campaign that resulted in the surrender of Vicksburg in July 1863, and full Union control of the Mississippi soon after.[153]
Eastern theater
For more details on this topic, see Eastern Theater of the American Civil War.
Because of the fierce resistance of a few initial Confederate forces at Manassas, Virginia, in July 1861, a march by Union troops under the command of Maj. Gen. Sony VPCF11MFX battery
Sony VPCF11BFX battery Irvin McDowell on the Confederate forces there was halted in the First Battle of Bull Run, or First Manassas,[154] McDowell's troops were forced back to Washington, D.C., by the Confederates under the command of Generals Joseph E. Johnston and P. G. T. Beauregard. It was in this battle that Confederate General Thomas Jackson received the nickname of "Stonewall" because he stood like a stone wall against Union troops.[155] Sony VPCF11FGX battery
Sony VPCF11AFX battery
The Battle of Antietam, the Civil War's deadliest one-day fight. Union troops committed piecemeal had little effect
Confederate ironclads at Norfolk and New Orleans dispersed blockade, until Union ironclads could defeat them
Sony VPCF119GX battery
Alarmed at the loss, and in an attempt to prevent more slave states from leaving the Union, the U.S. Congress passed the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution on July 25 of that year, which stated that the war was being fought to preserve the Union and not to end slavery. Sony VPCF113FX battery
Sony VPCF1190X battery
Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan took command of the Union Army of the Potomac on July 26 (he was briefly general-in-chief of all the Union armies, but was subsequently relieved of that post in favor of Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck), and the war began in earnest in 1862. Upon the strong urging of President Lincoln to begin offensive operations, Sony VPCF11LFX battery
Sony VPCF11NFX battery McClellan attacked Virginia in the spring of 1862 by way of the peninsula between the York River and James River, southeast of Richmond. Although McClellan's army reached the gates of Richmond in the Peninsula Campaign,[15Sony VPCF11DGX battery
Sony VPCF11GGX battery6][157][158] Johnston halted his advance at the Battle of Seven Pines, then General Robert E. Lee and top subordinates James Longstreet and Stonewall Jackson[159] defeated McClellan in the Seven Days Battles and forced his retreat. The Northern Virginia Campaign,
Sony VPCF111FX batterywhich included the Second Battle of Bull Run, ended in yet another victory for the South.[160] McClellan resisted General-in-Chief Halleck's orders to send reinforcements to John Pope's Union Army of Virginia, which made it easier for Lee's Confederates to defeat twice the number of combined enemy troops. Sony VPCF117FX battery
Sony VPCF116FX battery
Emboldened by Second Bull Run, the Confederacy made its first invasion of the North. General Lee led 45,000 men of the Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac River into Maryland on September 5. Lincoln then restored Pope's troops to McClellan. McClellan and Lee fought at the Battle of Antietam[1
Sony VPCF11CGX battery59] near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862, the bloodiest single day in United States military history.[161] Lee's army, checked at last, returned to Virginia before McClellan could destroy it. Antietam is considered a Union victory because it halted Lee's invasion of the North and provided an opportunity for Lincoln to announce his Emancipation Proclamation.[162] Sony VPCF112FX battery
Sony VPCF11KFX battery
When the cautious McClellan failed to follow up on Antietam, he was replaced by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside. Burnside was soon defeated at the Battle of Fredericksburg[163] on December 13, 1862, when over 12,000 Union soldiers were killed or wounded during repeated futile frontal assaults against Marye's Heights. After the battle, Burnside was replaced by Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker. Dell Latitude E5500 Battery
Hooker, too, proved unable to defeat Lee's army; despite outnumbering the Confederates by more than two to one, he was humiliated in the Battle of Chancellorsville[164] in May 1863. Gen. Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded by his own men during the battle and subsequently died of complications. Dell Latitude E5400 Battery
Dell Latitude E6330 Battery Gen. Hooker was replaced by Maj. Gen. George Meade during Lee's second invasion of the North, in June. Meade defeated Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg[165] (July 1 to July 3, 1863). Dell Latitude E5410 Battery
Dell Latitude E6230 BatteryThis was the bloodiest battle of the war, and has been called the war's turning point. Pickett's Charge on July 3 is often considered the high-water mark of the Confederacy because it signaled the collapse of serious Confederate threats of victory. Lee's army suffered 28,000 casualties (versus Meade's 23,000).[166] Dell Latitude E5510 Battery
Dell Latitude E6220 Battery However, Lincoln was angry that Meade failed to intercept Lee's retreat, and after Meade's inconclusive fall campaign, Lincoln turned to the Western Theater for new leadership. At the same time, Dell latitude e6400 Battery
Dell Latitude E6120 Batterythe Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg surrendered, giving the Union control of the Mississippi River, permanently isolating the western Confederacy, and producing the new leader Lincoln needed, Ulysses S. Grant. Dell latitude e6500 Battery
Dell Latitude E6400 ATG Battery
Western theater
For more details on this topic, see Western Theater of the American Civil War.
While the Confederate forces had numerous successes in the Eastern Theater, they were defeated many times in the West. They were driven from Missouri early in the war as a result of the Battle of Pea Ridge.[167] Leonidas Polk's invasion of Columbus, Kentucky ended Kentucky's policy of neutrality and turned that state against the Confederacy. Nashville and central Tennessee fell to the Union early in 1862, leading to attrition of local food supplies and livestock and a breakdown in social organization.
The Battle of Chickamauga, the highest two-day losses. Confederate victory held off Union offensive for two months.
New Orleans captured. Union ironclads forced passage, sank Confederate fleet, destroyed batteries, held docks for Army.
The Mississippi was opened to Union traffic to the southern border of Tennessee with the taking of Island No. 10 and New Madrid, Missouri, and then Memphis, Tennessee. In April 1862, the Union Navy captured New Orleans,[168] Dell Latitude E6400 XFR Battery
Dell Latitude E5530 Battery which allowed Union forces to begin moving up the Mississippi. Only the fortress city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, prevented Union control of the entire river.
General Braxton Bragg's second Confederate invasion of Kentucky ended with a meaningless victory over Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell at the Battle of Perryville,[16Dell Latitude E6410 Battery
Dell Latitude E6520 Battery9] although Bragg was forced to end his attempt at invading Kentucky and retreat due to lack of support for the Confederacy in that state. Bragg was narrowly defeated by Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans at the Battle of Stones River[170] in Tennessee.
The one clear Confederate victory in the West was the Battle of Chickamauga. Bragg, reinforced by Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's corps (from Lee's army in the east), Dell Latitude E6410 ATG Battery
Dell Latitude E6420 Batterydefeated Rosecrans, despite the heroic defensive stand of Maj. Gen. George Henry Thomas. Rosecrans retreated to Chattanooga, which Bragg then besieged.
The Union's key strategist and tactician in the West was Ulysses S. Grant, who won victories at Forts Henry and Donelson (by which the Union seized control of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers); the Battle of Shiloh;[1 Dell Latitude E6510 Battery
Dell Latitude E5520 Battery71] and the Battle of Vicksburg,[172] which cemented Union control of the Mississippi River and is considered one of the turning points of the war. Grant marched to the relief of Rosecrans and defeated Bragg at the Third Battle of Chattanooga,[173] driving Confederate forces out of Tennessee and opening a route to Atlanta and the heart of the Confederacy.
Trans-Mississippi
For more details on Missouri in the Civil War, see Trans-Mississippi Theater of the American Civil War.
Quantrill's Raid captured a hotel in free-state Kansas for a day in a town of 2,000, burned 185 buildings, killed 182 men and boys[175]
Nathaniel Lyon secured St. Louis docks and arsenal, led Union forces to expel Missouri Confederate forces and government[174] Dell Precision M2400 Battery
Extensive Guerrilla warfare characterized the trans-Mississippi region, as the Confederacy lacked the troops and the logistics to support regular armies that could challenge Union control.[176] Roving Confederate bands such as Quantrill's Raiders terrorized the countryside, striking both military installations and civilian settlements.[177] Dell Precision M4500 Battery
By 1864, these violent activities harmed the nationwide anti-war movement organizing against the re-election of Lincoln. The "Sons of Liberty" and "Order of the American Knights" attacked pro-Union people, elected officeholders, Dell Precision M6400 Battery
Dell Latitude E4320 Batteryand unarmed uniformed soldiers. These partisans could not be entirely driven out of the state of Missouri until an entire regular Union infantry division was engaged. Missouri not only stayed in the Union, Lincoln took 70 percent of the vote for re-election.[178] Dell Precision M6500 Battery
Areas south and west of Missouri saw numerous small-scale military actions which sought to control Indian Territory and New Mexico Territory for the Union. Confederate incursions into New Mexico were repulsed in 1862, the exiled Arizona government withdrew into Texas. In the Indian Territory, civil war broke out inside the tribes. Dell Latitude E6420-ATG Battery
Dell Latitude E5430 BatteryAbout 12,000 Indian warriors fought for the Confederacy, and smaller numbers for the Union.[179] The most prominent Cherokee was Brigadier General Stand Watie, the last Confederate general to surrender.[180] Dell Latitude E6430 Battery
After the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863, General Kirby Smith in Texas was informed by Jefferson Davis that he could expect no further help from east of the Mississippi River. Although he lacked resources to beat Union armies, Dell Latitude E6430-ATG Battery
Dell Latitude E5220 Battery he built up a formidable arsenal at Tyler, along with his own Kirby Smithdom economy, a virtual "independent fiefdom" in Texas, including railroad construction and international smuggling.
Dell Latitude E6530 BatteryThe Union in turn did not directly engage him.[181] Its 1864 Red River Campaign to take Shreveport, Louisiana was a failure and Texas remained in Confederate hands throughout the war.
End of war
Conquest of Virginia
At the beginning of 1864, Lincoln made Grant commander of all Union armies. Grant made his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac, and put Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in command of most of the western armies. Grant understood the concept of total war and believed, along with Lincoln and Sherman, Dell Latitude E6430S Battery
Dell Latitude E6430-XFR Batterythat only the utter defeat of Confederate forces and their economic base would end the war.[182] This was total war not in terms of killing civilians but rather in terms of destroying homes, farms, and railroads. Grant devised a coordinated strategy that would strike at the entire Confederacy from multiple directions. Dell XPS 14 Battery
Dell Inspiron 14R Battery Generals George Meade and Benjamin Butler were ordered to move against Lee near Richmond, General Franz Sigel (and later Philip Sheridan) were to attack the Shenandoah Valley, General Sherman was to capture Atlanta and march to the sea (the Atlantic Ocean), Dell XPS 17-L702X Battery
Dell XPS 17-L701X BatteryGenerals George Crook and William W. Averell were to operate against railroad supply lines in West Virginia, and Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks was to capture Mobile, Alabama. Dell XPS L501X Battery
These dead are from Ewell's May 1864 attack at Spotsylvania, delaying Grant's advance on Richmond in the Wilderness
The Peacemakers on the River Queen, March 1865. Sherman, Grant, Lincoln, and Porter pictured discussing plans for the last weeks of the Civil War
Union forces in the East attempted to maneuver past Lee and fought several battles during that phase ("Grant's Overland Campaign") of the Eastern campaign. Grant's battles of attrition at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor[18Dell XPS L701X Battery
Dell XPS L702X Battery3] resulted in heavy Union losses, but forced Lee's Confederates to fall back repeatedly. An attempt to outflank Lee from the south failed under Butler, who was trapped inside the Bermuda Hundred river bend. Grant was tenacious and, despite astonishing losses (over 65,000 casualties in seven weeks),[1Dell Inspiron N4020 Battery
Dell XPS 17 Battery84] kept pressing Lee's Army of Northern Virginia back to Richmond. He pinned down the Confederate army in the Siege of Petersburg, where the two armies engaged in trench warfare for over nine months. Dell Inspiron N4030 Battery
Grant finally found a commander, General Philip Sheridan, aggressive enough to prevail in the Valley Campaigns of 1864. Sheridan was initially repelled at the Battle of New Market by former U.S. Vice President and Confederate Gen. John C. Breckinridge. Dell Inspiron N7010R Battery
Dell XPS 15-L502X Battery The Battle of New Market would prove to be the Confederacy's last major victory of the war. After redoubling his efforts, Sheridan defeated Maj. Gen. Jubal A. Early in a series of battles, including a final decisive defeat at the Battle of Cedar Creek. Sheridan then proceeded to destroy the agricultural base of the Shenandoah Valley,[185] a strategy similar to the tactics Sherman later employed in Georgia. Dell Inspiron N5110 Battery
Meanwhile, Sherman maneuvered from Chattanooga to Atlanta, defeating Confederate Generals Joseph E. Johnston and John Bell Hood along the way. The fall of Atlanta on September 2, 1864, guaranteed the reelection of Lincoln as president.[186] Hood left the Atlanta area to swing around and menace Sherman's supply lines and invade Tennessee in the Franklin-Nashville Campaign.[18
Dell XPS 15D Battery7] Union Maj. Gen. John Schofield defeated Hood at the Battle of Franklin, and George H. Thomas dealt Hood a massive defeat at the Battle of Nashville, effectively destroying Hood's army.
Leaving Atlanta, and his base of supplies, Sherman's army marched with an unknown destination, laying waste to about 20% of the farms in Georgia in his "March to the Sea". He reached the Atlantic Ocean at Savannah,
Dell Inspiron 13R Battery Georgia in December 1864. Sherman's army was followed by thousands of freed slaves; there were no major battles along the March. Sherman turned north through South Carolina and North Carolina to approach the Confederate Virginia lines from the south,[188] increasing the pressure on Lee's army. Dell Inspiron N5030 Battery
Lee's army, thinned by desertion and casualties, was now much smaller than Grant's. Union forces won a decisive victory at the Battle of Five Forks on April 1, forcing Lee to evacuate Petersburg and Richmond. The Confederate capital fell[Dell Inspiron N3010R Battery
Dell Inspiron N4110 Battery189] to the Union XXV Corps, composed of black troops. The remaining Confederate units fled west and after a defeat at Sayler's Creek, it became clear to Robert E. Lee that continued fighting against the United States was both tactically and logistically impossible.
Confederacy surrenders
Map of Confederate territory losses year by year
Main article: Conclusion of the American Civil War
Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, at the McLean House in the village of Appomattox Court House.[190Dell Inspiron N3010 Battery
] In an untraditional gesture and as a sign of Grant's respect and anticipation of peacefully restoring Confederate states to the Union, Lee was permitted to keep his sword and his horse, Traveller. On April 14, 1865, President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, a Southern sympathizer.
Lincoln died early the next morning, and Andrew Johnson became president. Meanwhile, Confederate forces across the South surrendered as news of Lee's surrender reached them.[191] President Johnson officially declared a virtual end to the insurrection on May 9, 1865.[1Dell Inspiron N4010 Battery
Dell Inspiron N7010 Battery] On June 23, 1865, Cherokee leader Stand Watie was the last Confederate General to surrender his forces.[192]
Diplomacy
Main articles: Britain in the American Civil War and France in the American Civil War
Europe in the 1860s was more fragmented than it had been since before the American Revolution. France was in a weakened state while Britain was still shocked by their poor performance in the Crimean War.[193Dell Inspiron N4010D Battery
Dell Inspiron N4010R Battery] France was unable or unwilling to support either side without Britain, where popular support remained with the Union though elite opinion was more varied. They were further distracted by Germany and Italy, who were experiencing unification troubles, and by Russia, who was almost unflinching in their support for the Union.[193][194Sony SVS13AA11L Battery
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Though the Confederacy hoped that Britain and France would join them against the Union, this was never likely, and so they instead tried to bring Britain and France in as mediators.[193][194] The Union,
Sony PCG-41414L Battery under Lincoln and Secretary of State William H. Seward worked to block this, and threatened war if any country officially recognized the existence of the Confederate States of America. In 1861, Southerners voluntarily embargoed cotton shipments, hoping to start an economic depression in Europe that would force Britain to enter the war in order to get cotton but this did not work.[195] Sony SVS131B11L Battery
Crewmembers of USS Wissahickon by the ship's 11-inch (280 mm) Dahlgren gun, circa 1863
Cotton diplomacy proved a failure as Europe had a surplus of cotton, while the 1860–62 crop failures in Europe made the North's grain exports of critical importance. It also helped to turn European opinion further away from the Confederacy. Sony SVS151A11L Battery
Sony PCG-41413L Battery It was said that "King Corn was more powerful than King Cotton", as U.S. grain went from a quarter of the British import trade to almost half.[195] When Britain did face a cotton shortage, it was temporary, being replaced by increased cultivation in Egypt and India. Meanwhile, the war created employment for arms makers, ironworkers, and British ships to transport weapons.[196]
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Charles Francis Adams proved particularly adept as minister to Britain for the U.S. and Britain was reluctant to boldly challenge the blockade. The Confederacy purchased several warships from commercial ship builders in Britain. Sony SVS151B11L Battery
Sony PCG-41411L BatteryThe most famous, the CSS Alabama, did considerable damage and led to serious postwar disputes. However, public opinion against slavery created a political liability for European politicians, especially in Britain (who had herself abolished slavery in her own colonies in 1834).[197]
War loomed in late 1861 between the U.S. and Britain over the Trent Affair, involving the U.S. Navy's boarding of a British mail steamer to seize two Confederate diplomats. However, London and Washington were able to smooth over the problem after Lincoln released the two. In 1862,
Sony PCG-41217L Batterythe British considered mediation—though even such an offer would have risked war with the U.S. Lord Palmerston reportedly read Uncle Tom's Cabin three times when deciding on this.[197]
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The Union victory in the Battle of Antietam caused them to delay this decision. The Emancipation Proclamation over time would reinforce the political liability of supporting the Confederacy. Despite sympathy for the Confederacy, France's own seizure of Mexico ultimately deterred them from war with the Union.
Sony PCG-41215L Battery Confederate offers late in the war to end slavery in return for diplomatic recognition were not seriously considered by London or Paris. After 1863, the Polish revolt against Russia further distracted the European powers, and ensured that they would continue to remain neutral.[198]
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Victory and aftermath
Results and costs
The causes of the war, the reasons for its outcome, and even the name of the war itself are subjects of lingering contention today. There is much less dispute about the results. Confederate nationalism died.
Sony PCG-41213L BatteryAmerican nationalism triumphed. The North and West grew rich while the once-rich South became poor for a century. The national political power of the slaveowners and rich southerners ended.
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Sony PCG-41212L Battery Historians are less sure about the results of the postwar Reconstruction, especially regarding the second class citizenship of the Freedmen and their poverty. The Freedmen did indeed get their freedom, their citizenship, and control of their lives, their families and their churches.
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Results
Historians have debated whether the Confederacy could have won the war. Most scholars, such as James McPherson, argue that Confederate victory was at least possible.[199] McPherson argues that the North's advantage in population and resources made Northern victory likely but not guaranteed.
Sony PCG-4121FL BatteryHe also argues that if the Confederacy had fought using unconventional tactics, they would have more easily been able to hold out long enough to exhaust the Union.[200]
Comparison of Union and CSA, 1860–1864[201]
Confederates did not need to invade and hold enemy territory to win, but only needed to fight a defensive war to convince the North that the cost of winning was too high. Sony SVS151G1GL Battery
The North needed to conquer and hold vast stretches of enemy territory and defeat Confederate armies to win.[200] The Confederacy sought to win independence by out-lasting Lincoln; however, after Atlanta fell and Lincoln defeated McClellan in the election of 1864, Sony PCG-4121DL Battery
Sony PCG-4121EL Batteryall hope for a political victory for the South ended. At that point, Lincoln had succeeded in getting the support of the border states, War Democrats, emancipated slaves, Britain, and France. By defeating the Democrats and McClellan, he also defeated the Copperheads and their peace platform.[206] Sony SVS13AB1GL Battery
Many scholars argue that the Union held an insurmountable long-term advantage over the Confederacy in terms of industrial strength and population. Confederate actions, they argue, only delayed defeat.[207][208Sony SVS131C1DL Battery][209] Civil War historian Shelby Foote expressed this view succinctly: "I think that the North fought that war with one hand behind its back ... If there had been more Southern victories, and a lot more, the North simply would have brought that other hand out from behind its back. I don't think the South ever had a chance to win that War."[210] Sony SVS131C24L Battery
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Also important were Lincoln's eloquence in rationalizing the national purpose and his skill in keeping the border states committed to the Union cause. Although Lincoln's approach to emancipation was slow, the Emancipation Proclamation was an effective use of the President's war powers.[21
Sony PCG-91211L Battery1] The Confederate government failed in its attempt to get Europe involved in the war militarily, particularly the United Kingdom and France. Southern leaders needed to get European powers to help break up the blockade the Union had created around the Southern ports and cities.
Sony PCG-71913L BatteryLincoln's naval blockade was 95% effective at stopping trade goods; as a result, imports and exports to the South declined significantly. The abundance of European cotton and the United Kingdom's hostility to the institution of slavery, along with Lincoln's Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico naval blockades, severely decreased any chance that either the United Kingdom or France would enter the war.
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Costs
The war produced about 1,030,000 casualties (3% of the population), including about 620,000 soldier deaths—two-thirds by disease, and 50,000 civilians.[212] Binghamton University historian J. David Hacker believes the number of soldier deaths was approximately 750,000, 20% higher than traditionally estimated, and possibly as high as 850,000.[213][214] The war accounted for roughly as many American deaths as all American deaths in other U.S. wars combined.[215]
One in thirteen veterans were amputees
Remains of both sides were reinterred
National cemeteries dot the South; this is one in Andersonville GA
Based on 1860 census figures, 8% of all white males aged 13 to 43 died in the war, including 6% in the North and 18% in the South.[216][21Sony SVS131E1DL Battery
Sony PCG-71911L Battery7] About 56,000 soldiers died in prisons during the Civil War.[218] An estimated 60,000 men lost limbs in the war.[219] Sony SVS131G1DL Battery
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One reason for the high number of battle deaths during the war was the use of Napoleonic tactics, such as charging. With the advent of more accurate rifled barrels, Minié balls and (near the end of the war for the Union army) repeating firearms such as the Spencer Repeating Rifle and the Henry Repeating Rifle, Sony SVS151C2DL Battery
Sony PCG-71811L Battery soldiers were mowed down when standing in lines in the open. This led to the adoption of trench warfare, a style of fighting that defined the better part of World War I.
The wealth amassed in slaves and slavery for the Confederacy's 3.5 million blacks effectively ended when Union armies arrived; Sony SVS151E1GL Battery
Sony PCG-71713L Batterythey were nearly all freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. Slaves in the border states and those located in some former Confederate territory occupied prior to the Emancipation Proclamation were freed by state action or (on December 18, 1865) by the Thirteenth Amendment.
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The war destroyed much of the wealth that had existed in the South. All accumulated investment Confederate bonds was forfeit; most banks and railroads were bankrupt. Income per person in the South dropped to less than 40% than that of the North, Sony PCG-61A11L Battery
Sony PCG-61913L Battery a condition which lasted until well into the 20th century. Southern influence in the US federal government, previously considerable, was greatly diminished until the latter half of the 20th century.[220] The full restoration of the Union was the work of a highly contentious postwar era known as Reconstruction. Sony PCG-61A13L Battery
Emancipation
The Emancipation Proclamation enabled African-Americans, both free blacks and escaped slaves, to join the Union Army.[221] About 190,000 volunteered, further enhancing the numerical advantage the Union armies enjoyed over the Confederates, who did not dare emulate the equivalent manpower source for fear of fundamentally undermining the legitimacy of slavery.[222]
Sony PCG-61911L Battery During the Civil War, sentiment concerning slaves, enslavement and emancipation in the United States was divided. In 1861, Lincoln worried that premature attempts at emancipation would mean the loss of the border states, and that "to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game." [2Sony PCG-61A14L Battery
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Sony PCG-61813L Battery23] Copperheads and some War Democrats opposed emancipation, although the latter eventually accepted it as part of total war needed to save the Union.[224]
Contrabands — fugitive slaves — cooks, laundresses, laborers, teamsters, railroad repair crews — fled to the Union Army, but were not officially freed until 1863 Emancipation Proclamation
In 1863, the Union army accepted Freedmen. Sony PCG-71C12L Battery
Sony PCG-61714L BatteryHere are Black and White teen-aged soldiers.
At first, Lincoln reversed attempts at emancipation by Secretary of War Simon Cameron and Generals John C. Frémont (in Missouri) and David Hunter (in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida) to keep the loyalty of the border states and the War Democrats. Sony SVE141C11L Battery
Sony PCG-71218L BatteryLincoln warned the border states that a more radical type of emancipation would happen if his gradual plan based on compensated emancipation and voluntary colonization was rejected.[
Sony PCG-71311L Battery225] But only the District of Columbia accepted Lincoln's gradual plan, which was enacted by Congress. When Lincoln told his cabinet about his proposed emancipation proclamation, Seward advised Lincoln to wait for a victory before issuing it, as to do otherwise would seem like "our last shriek on the retreat".[22Sony SVE141D11L Battery
Sony PCG-71312L Battery6] Lincoln laid the groundwork for public support in an open letter published letter to abolitionist Horace Greeley's newspaper.[227] Sony SVE141L11L Battery
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In September 1862, the Battle of Antietam provided this opportunity, and the subsequent War Governors' Conference added support for the proclamation.[228] Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, Sony SVE151E11L Battery
Sony PCG-91111L Battery and his final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. In his letter to Hodges, Lincoln explained his belief that "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong ... And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling . Sony SVE151G11L Battery
Sony PCG-61713L Battery.. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me." [229]
Lincoln's moderate approach succeeded in getting border states, War Democrats and emancipated slaves fighting on the same side for the Union. The Union-controlled border states (Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia) and Union controlled regions around New Orleans,
Sony SVE171G112 BatteryNorfolk and elsewhere, were not covered by the Emancipation Proclamation. All abolished slavery on their own, except Kentucky and Delaware.[230]
Since the Emancipation Proclamation was based on the President's war powers, it only included territory held by Confederates at the time. However, the Proclamation became a symbol of the Union's growing commitment to add emancipation to the Union's definition of liberty.
Sony SVE171E12L Battery [231] The Emancipation Proclamation greatly reduced the Confederacy's hope of getting aid from Britain or France.[232] By late 1864, Lincoln was playing a leading role in getting Congress to vote for the Thirteenth Amendment, which made emancipation universal and permanent.[233]
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Reconstruction
Main article: Reconstruction Era of the United States
Reconstruction began during the war, with the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 and continued to 1877.[2Sony SVE171C11L Battery34] It comprised multiple complex methods to resolve the war, the most important of which were the three "Reconstruction Amendments" to the Constitution which remain in effect to the present time: the 13th (1865), Sony SVE151G13L Battery
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the 14th (1868) and the 15th (1870). From the Union perspective, the goals of Reconstruction were to guarantee the Union victory on the battlefield by reuniting the Union; to guarantee a "republican form of government for the ex-Confederate states; and to permanently end slavery—and prevent semi-slavery status.[235] Sony PCG-71217L Battery
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President Johnson took a lenient approach and saw the achievement of the main war goals as realized in 1865, when each ex-rebel state repudiated secession and ratified the Thirteenth Amendment. Radical Republicans demanded strong proof that Confederate nationalism was dead and the slaves were truly free. Sony PCG-71313L Battery
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Sony PCG-61316L BatteryThey came to the fore after the 1866 elections and undid much of Johnson's work. They used the Army to dissolve Southern state governments and hold new elections with Freedmen voting.
Sony PCG-61315L BatteryThe result was a Republican coalition that took power in ten states for varying lengths of time, staying in power with the help of U.S. Army units and black voters. Grant was elected president in 1868 and continued the Radical policies. Meanwhile the Freedman's Bureau,
Sony PCG-61312L Batterystarted by Lincoln in 1865 to help the freed slaves, played a major role in helping the blacks and arranging work for them. In opposition paramilitary groups such as the first Ku Klux Klan used violence to thwart these efforts.[236] Sony PCG-71316L Battery
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The "Liberal Republicans" argued the war goals had been achieved and Reconstruction should end. They ran a ticket in 1872 but were decisively defeated as Grant was reelected. In 1874 Democrats took control of Congress and opposed any more reconstruction. Sony PCG-71317L Battery
Sony PCG-61215L BatteryThe disputed 1876 election was resolved by the Compromise of 1877 which put Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in the White House. He pulled out the last federal troops and the last Republican state governments in the South collapsed, marking the end of Civil War and Reconstruction.[237]
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Memory and historiography
Monument to the Grand Army of the Republic, a Union veteran organization
Cherokee Confederates reunion in New Orleans, 1903
The Civil War is one of the central events in America's collective memory. There are innumerable statues, commemorations, books and archival collections. The memory includes the home front, military affairs, the treatment of soldiers, both living and dead, in the war's aftermath, depictions of the war in literature and art,
Sony PCG-71216L Battery evaluations of heroes and villains, and considerations of the moral and political lessons of the war.[238] The last theme includes moral evaluations of racism and slavery, heroism in combat and behind the lines, and the issues of democracy and minority rights, as well as the notion of an "Empire of Liberty" influencing the world.[ Sony PCG-71318L Battery
Sony PCG-71215L Battery239] Memory of the war in the white South crystallized in the myth of the "Lost Cause", which shaped regional identity and race relations for generations.[240]
150th anniversary
2011 marked the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War. Many in the American South attempted to incorporate both black history and white perspectives. A Harris Poll given in March 2011 suggested that Americans were still uniquely divided over the results and appropriate memorials to acknowledge the occasion.[ Sony PCG-71211L Battery
Sony PCG-71212L Battery241] While traditionally American films of the Civil War feature "brother versus brother" themes[242] film treatments of the war are evolving to include African American characters. Benard Simelton, president of the Alabama NAACP, Sony PCG-71111L Battery
the Civil War is like celebrating the "Holocaust". In reference to slavery, Simelton said that black "rights were taken away" and that blacks "were treated as less than human beings." National Park historian Bob Sutton said that slavery was the "principal cause" of the war. Sutton also claimed that the issue of state rights was incorporated by the Confederacy as a justification for the war in
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said celebrating order to get recognition from Britain. Sutton went on to mention that during the 100th anniversary of the Civil War white southerners focused on the genius of southern generals, rather than slavery. In Virginia during the fall of 2010, Sony PCG-81111L Battery
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Sony PCG-81314L Batterya conference took place that addressed the slavery issue. During November 2010, black Civil War reenactors from around the country participated in a parade at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.[243]