CHAPTER 5 By the mid-1800s there were many differences dividing the Northern and Southern states. The major difference lingered from the signing of the Constitution, when some statesmen opposed slavery while others clearly favored it. Slavery wasn’t the only issue that divided the country, however. In the North, agricultural, commercial, and industrial development led to fast-growing cities, whereas in the South, the economy was dependent on foreign sales of cotton. In addition, the South opposed tariffs on imported goods, but the North’s manufacturing economy demanded tariffs to stave off foreign competition. While you’ve probably read all about the issue of slavery and Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, you’ll find plenty of facts inside this chapter that you may not know about the growing tension between the North and the South during the 1800s.
WHEN SLAVEHOLDING MISSOURI applied for statehood in 1818, there was a balance of slave states and free states, with eleven of each. Each faction viewed any attempt by the other faction to tip the scales as dangerous. Such fears delayed the annexation of Texas. Thus, Congress found a middle ground with what became known as the Missouri Compromise, enacted in 1820, which regulated the extension of slavery in the country for three decades until its repeal, in part, by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.
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IN 1857, THE U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Dred Scott, a fugitive slave who argued for his freedom after his master died when the two traveled to another state. When the Missouri state court ruled against Scott, he took his case to the Supreme Court, where Chief Justice Roger B. Taney had the final word, denying him the right to sue for his freedom, reasoning that a slave wasn’t a citizen.
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THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT authorized the creation of Kansas and Nebraska, territories west and north of Missouri, and stipulated that the inhabitants of these territories would decide the legality of slavery. The bill’s sponsor, Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, wanted to assure Southern support for white settlement into otherwise Native American territory. He hoped such settlement would facilitate construction of the transcontinental railroad.
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TENSIONS BETWEEN THE North and South grew more passionate after the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The vicious fighting that resulted became known as “Bleeding Kansas,” and one of the names made famous over this dispute was John Brown, a self-ordained preacher with fervor against slavery. In May 1856, John Brown and his sons murdered five slave-supporting settlers in cold blood at Pottawatomie Creek.
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THE ISSUE OF SLAVERY and the political fallout split the Democratic Party and destroyed the badly divided Whig Party, particularly in the South. The northern Whigs joined antislavery sentiment, forming the Republican Party in 1854.
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THE COTTON GIN might even be blamed for the North-South turmoil. Invented by twenty-seven-year-old Eli Whitney in 1793, it made cleaning cottonseeds fifty times faster than by hand.
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THERE WERE MANY advances in farming during this time. As far back as 1797, Charles Newbold, a New Jersey blacksmith, introduced the cast-iron moldboard plow. John Deere, another blacksmith, improved this plow in the 1830s, manufacturing it in steel. In 1831, twenty-two-year-old Cyrus McCormick invented the reaper, a machine that in only a few hours could cut an amount of grain that had taken two or three men a day to scythe by hand. Numerous other horse-drawn threshers, grain and grass cutters, cultivators, and other equipment made farming easier. By the late 1800s, steam power frequently replaced animal power in drawing plows and operating farm machinery.
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SINCE THE BIRTH of the republic, states were fearful of tyranny and slow to release any powers to the federal government. In fact, the principle of nullification (legal theory that a state can nullify any federal law it deems unconstitutional) was supported by many of the early founders, among them James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, who elaborated the compact theory in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. The New England states nullified an unpopular embargo from 1809 to 1810, and years later, Georgia nullified federal laws relating to Native Americans.
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THE COMPACT THEORY claimed the nation was formed through a compact by the states, so consequently the national government is a creation of the states. The states therefore should be the final judges of whether or not the government has overstepped its boundaries.
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THE ANTISLAVERY FACTION, comprised mostly of Northerners, helped fugitive slaves reach safety in a loose, secret network dubbed “the Underground Railroad,” sometimes called “the Liberty Line.” This enabled runaway slaves to achieve safety in the free states or in Canada. Of course, even in free states runaway slaves would not be safe, as the federal Fugitive Slave Law under the Compromise of 1850 required that they be returned to their owners.
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BEGUN IN THE 1780s BY QUAKERS, the Underground Railroad is thought to have helped approximately 60,000 slaves gain freedom through its lifeline.
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MANY HIDING OUT in the Underground Railroad traveled less conspicuously at night, using the North Star for guidance. Isolated farms or towns sympathetic to a slave’s plight would effectively conceal them. Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave, became known as the Moses of the blacks for her work in rescuing slaves and leading them to freedom.
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THE FEDERAL FUGITIVE SLAVE LAWS OF 1793 AND 1850 became difficult to enforce as Northern judges restricted the rights of many a slave’s master in free states. This further enraged the Southern states, galvanizing sentiment toward Civil War.
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ABRAHAM LINCOLN WAS born on February 12, 1809, in a log cabin that his father built in Kentucky. Because land titles were disputed in Kentucky, Abe’s father moved the family to Pigeon Creek, Indiana (near Gentryville today), where the federal government was selling land, and Abe learned to wield an ax. In later years, his campaign hearkened back to these “rail splitter” days to prove that Abe came from humble roots.
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LINCOLN WAS THE first president to be born outside of the original thirteen states of the Union. Other presidents, such as Jackson, Polk, Harrison, and Taylor, had moved to the frontier to make their fortunes, but all of the previous presidents had been born east of the Appalachian Mountains until Lincoln.
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FROM BACKWOODS ORIGINS, Abraham Lincoln held many jobs in his lifetime—rail splitter, ferryboat captain, store clerk, surveyor, and postmaster among them. But the job that solidified his place as a great figure in history was his role as the sixteenth president of the United States during a time of great strife.
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THE PRACTICE OF supporting the projects of other legislators in return for their support became known as logrolling, a term derived from a game of skill, especially among lumberjacks, in which two competitors try to balance on a floating log while spinning it with their feet.
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IN THE SPRING of 1832, Lincoln decided to run for a seat in the Illinois House of Representatives. Before the election, he volunteered in the suppression of a rebellion by Native Americans led by Chief Black Hawk, though he saw no actual fighting. Despite a platform of better schools, roads, and canals, Lincoln was defeated, and he began a venture with a general store, followed by his job as a postmaster, a position that gave him ample time to read ravenously, especially newspapers.
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LINCOLN RAN FOR the Illinois legislature again in 1834. He was elected every two years, and he studied law between legislative sessions. This experience as a state legislator sharpened his political savvy. Lincoln’s first public stand on slavery, which he’d encountered years earlier when he viewed a slave auction, came in 1837 when the Illinois legislature voted to condemn abolition societies that wanted to end the practice by any means. Although Lincoln was opposed to slavery, he also felt strongly that extreme measures were not necessary and that lawful conduct could end the practice.
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THOUGH LINCOLN BECAME a licensed lawyer in 1836 and continued as a state legislator, economic achievement didn’t automatically follow and neither did success in a romantic relationship. He had lost his love, Ann Rutledge, and some time after her death he proposed marriage to another woman, who turned him down. It wasn’t until he met Mary Todd in 1840 that courtship blossomed, and the two were married two years later.
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ABRAHAM AND MARY TODD LINCOLN had four children, but only their eldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln, would survive to adulthood. It’s said that Mary Todd Lincoln made her husband’s life miserable, for she was unable to handle the loss of their children in later years. Though she was perhaps unstable, Lincoln remained devoted to her, and she in turn supported his political rise.
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LINCOLN LOVED HIS high-strung wife, Mary, but there were times when he didn’t pay attention to her. She would frequently make him pay for it. Once when she asked him to put a log on the fire when she was busy attending to their young children, Lincoln was so involved in a book he was reading that he didn’t hear her and let the fire go out. Mary was so frustrated by this that she hit him in the head with a piece of firewood!
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THE AMBITIOUS LEGISLATOR and lawyer soon looked beyond Illinois to the U.S. Congress, and he was elected in 1846 to the House of Representatives.
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ILLINOIS CONSTITUENTS DENOUNCED him as a traitor when he opposed the Mexican-American War begun by President Polk, and in 1847, he called on Polk for proof of the president’s insistence that the war began when Mexicans shed American blood on American soil. Once war was declared, however, Lincoln supported all appropriations, despite his private opinions.
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ABOLITIONIST JOHN BROWN grew so obsessed with winning freedom for slaves that on October 16, 1859, he and approximately twenty others incited an uprising. Federal troops commanded by Robert E. Lee retaliated, killing about half the group, wounding Brown, and taking him prisoner. Brown was brought to trial and convicted of treason, murder, and criminal conspiracy. He was hanged on December 2, 1859.
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BY 1856, THE Whig Party that Lincoln belonged to had died out, and the young politician officially identified himself as a Republican. As Senator Stephen Douglas ran for re-election, the Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln to oppose him. Lincoln accepted the nomination.
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ALTHOUGH LINCOLN LOST, the debates had more impact than the defeated candidate would imagine. They launched Lincoln onto the national stage, giving him opportunities to speak in other states. He spoke out against the extreme abolitionist John Brown, who incited violence. After speaking in New York, Lincoln became the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 1860.
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WHEN THE PARTY CONVENED, they did in fact select Lincoln as their presidential nominee. Though he won only 40 percent of the popular vote, he received the majority of electoral votes (though none in the South) and won the race to become the sixteenth president of the United States.
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THE HOMESTEAD ACT OF 1862 gave settlers 160 acres of federal land for a nominal filing fee if they would farm it for five years. This federally owned land included property in all states except the original thirteen and Maine, Vermont, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Texas.
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SOUTHERN MILITANTS HAD already threatened to secede from the Union if Lincoln was elected president. Sure enough, when election results became known, South Carolina became the first Southern state to leave the Union in December 1860. By February, several other states followed as they developed their own government.
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BECAUSE RUMORS OF a possible assassination plot were rampant, Lincoln quietly sneaked into Washington at night for his inauguration on March 4, 1861. Ironically, Lincoln was sworn in as president by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, who also issued the Dred Scott decision—a deed that spurred the crisis that would consume Lincoln’s presidency.
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FOLLOWING SOUTH CAROLINA’S SECESSION, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas adopted similar ordinances. The seceding states sent representatives to a convention in Montgomery, Alabama, where they adopted a provisional constitution, gave themselves a name, and chose a president of their own. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was named president of the Confederacy, and the delegates ratified their separate constitution. Thus, the Confederate States of America (known as the Confederacy) was born.
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MOST PEOPLE THINK of Richmond, Virginia, as the original capital of the Confederate States of America, but Virginia did not secede from the Union until many months after the states of the Deep South did. The capital was originally located in Montgomery, Alabama.
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JEFFERSON DAVIS WAS born on June 3, 1808, in Kentucky. He was educated at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, and at the U.S. Military Academy. He served on the frontier following graduation until his health forced him to leave the army in 1835. From then on, Davis was a planter in Mississippi until he was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1845. When the Mexican War broke out a year later, he resigned his seat to serve, fighting at Monterrey and Buena Vista.
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FOLLOWING THE WAR, Davis served as a U.S. senator from Mississippi, as secretary of war for President Franklin Pierce, and again as U.S. senator from 1857 to 1861. His legislative voice was heard arguing in support of states’ rights, and he used his influence during the Pierce administration to pass the Kansas–Nebraska Act, favoring a proslavery sentiment. Ironically, Davis didn’t favor secession. As a senator, he tried to keep the Southern states in the Union, although when his own state of Mississippi seceded, he gave up his Senate seat.
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FRANKLIN PIERCE HAD to convince Jefferson Davis (whom he knew from both the U.S. Senate and the army during the Mexican War) to serve as his secretary of war. Davis was a talented administrator and reformed the army, making it more efficient and better at doing its job. Here’s the strange part: Within four years Davis would be trying to defeat the army he had reorganized and rebuilt once he was elected president of the Confederate States of America.
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JAMES BUCHANAN, who succeeded Pierce as our 15th president, fell in love and became engaged to a girl named Anne Coleman in 1819. At one point the couple argued, and Anne broke off the engagement. While away visiting relatives, she died suddenly, apparently of suicide. Buchanan was devastated. He swore he would never marry, and he never did. He was our only bachelor president. His niece (who was an orphan at a young age but Buchanan raised her from childhood) performed the duties of the first lady during his administration.
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ON MAY 24, 1861, the Confederates moved their capital from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia. When created, the Confederacy had a population of almost 9 million, including nearly 4 million slaves. But that paled by comparison to the Union population of approximately 22 million. Land values were higher in the North, as was economic strength, making the South extremely dependent on Europe for many material items.
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DAVIS DID APPOINT General Robert E. Lee as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, and Davis remained true to his task until the bitter end. He staunchly believed the South could achieve independence, until he realized that defeat was imminent. He fled the Confederate capital of Richmond, and on May 10, 1865, federal troops captured him in Georgia. For two years he was imprisoned at Fortress Monroe in Virginia. He was indicted for treason, but released one year later on bond.
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FORT SUMTER, which lay at the entrance to the Charleston harbor, remained under the command of Major Robert Anderson and a small detachment of federal troops. It was by far the most important of the four forts remaining under Union control after Lincoln’s election.
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HARRIET BEECHER STOWE was an American writer and abolitionist who wrote a powerful novel—Uncle Tom’s Cabin—that precipitated the Civil War as it strengthened the antislavery movement. Legend has it that when President Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, he said, “So you’re the little lady who started the Civil War.”
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RELUCTANTLY, BECAUSE HE feared igniting war, President Lincoln sent supplies to reinforce Fort Sumter, but the Confederates blocked the harbor. With orders from President Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy, General Beauregard demanded that the Union surrender the fort. When Major Anderson ignored the ultimatum, Confederate fire erupted on April 12, 1861, and Anderson had little choice but to surrender.
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EVEN IN 2000, South Carolina’s allegiance to its Confederate past was strong. Angry protests surrounded the flying of the Confederate battle flag over South Carolina’s statehouse dome between 1962 and 2000. On July 1, 2000, the flag was moved from the dome to another location on the statehouse lawn.
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EARLY IN THE CIVIL WAR, Lincoln removed Brigadier General Irvin McDowell from his command of the federal army and placed Major General George B. McClellan in the role. While McClellan restored morale and raised the caliber of the fighting forces, he lacked decisiveness and was very slow.
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UNION SOLDIERS DRESSED in blue government-issued uniforms, whereas the South’s official color was gray. However, as some clothing worn by Confederate soldiers came from Union casualties or their own clothing reserves, the dress code varied a bit.
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IN JULY 1861, at the Battle of Bull Run, or what the South called First Manassas, the Confederates used some of the brightest and best in military talent to defeat the rather haphazard Union soldiers marching into Virginia. The Confederate army of General Beauregard maintained a line along Bull Run Creek (or Manassas Junction), and the Virginia brigade led by Thomas J. Jackson was at the line’s center. His stubborn defense earned him the nickname “Stonewall Jackson,” for his troops remained standing like a stone wall.
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IN FEBRUARY 1862, Union gunboats led by Commodore Andrew Foote steamed up the Tennessee River to reach Fort Henry, where the plan called for an amphibious attack en route to Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River. Ulysses S. Grant led forces on land, but the muddy roads they traversed slowed them. Foote grew impatient and fired, wrecking havoc with the fort’s walls and Rebel guns. With floodwaters flowing in, the Southern forces raised the white flag.
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AFTER GRANT ALLOWED his name change to Ulysses S. Grant, he began to be called by a number of nicknames arising from it. First, because he was now U.S. Grant, his compatriots in the army called him “Uncle Sam,” eventually shortening it to just “Sam.” Later, when he was a successful battlefield general during the Civil War, Grant earned the nickname “Unconditional Surrender.”
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MOST OF THE escaping Confederates sought shelter at Fort Donelson. Grant’s army pursued them by land, reinforced by the gunboats making their way up the river. But with this fort situated high on a bluff, the fire by water did little but cause a retaliatory hail of bullets. Union soldiers broke Confederate lines and caused acting General Buckner to surrender. Buckner, who had known Grant before the Civil War, expected generous surrender terms. That was wishful thinking, for Grant demanded unconditional and immediate surrender, earning him the nickname “Unconditional Surrender” Grant. Soon after these forts were taken, Union troops took Tennessee’s capital at Nashville, giving them a commanding presence in Southern territory, especially along the rivers. The march farther south commenced.
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MORE THAN 150 prisons were established during the Civil War. All were filled beyond capacity, with inmates crowded into camps and shelters with meager provisions. Although precise figures may never be known, an estimated 56,000 men perished in Civil War prisons, a casualty rate far greater than any battle during the war.
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IN EARLY APRIL 1862, Grant was in a holding pattern in Tennessee while he waited for another Union commander to join him in a campaign toward Corinth, Mississippi. However, Confederate commander Albert Johnston’s troops struck Grant’s army by surprise. Grant lost approximately 13,000 men and the Confederates almost as many in a bloody battle known as Shiloh (ironically, the Hebrew word for “place of peace”).
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WITH GENERAL MCCLELLAN in charge, the Union army began its Peninsular campaign, advancing by way of the peninsula between the James and York Rivers in Virginia in order to reach Richmond, the Confederate capital. But McClellan was not a decisive leader, and he was dreadfully slow, delaying the assault on Richmond. The resulting Seven Days Battle, fought in late June 1862, led to an alarming number of casualties. Lincoln’s administration held McClellan responsible for not taking Richmond, while McClellan blamed the president for not sending reinforcements.
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THOUGH MOST OF the nation’s attention was focused on the peninsula, the Union needed to gain control of New Orleans if it ever wanted to navigate the Mississippi River and effectively blockade the South. In April 1862, Flag Officer David Farragut, with a squadron of ships carrying federal troops, started up the Mississippi and arrived on April 25, demanding surrender. As the Confederates numbered only 3,000, they gave up easily, inflicting a painful loss on the South.
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UPON THE FAILURE of the Peninsular campaign, Lincoln named Henry Halleck as the top general of the Union armies. Halleck ordered McClellan to bring his men back to Washington, for Lincoln was not about to leave Washington, DC, unguarded. Organized in June 1862, the Army of Virginia had 45,000 troops and a fresh commander, Major General John Pope. Pope soon marched south with hopes of taking Richmond.
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WITH OTHERS IN HIS COMPANY, Lee rushed to join Jackson, and on August 25, 1862, Confederate forces moved in on the Union at Manassas, capturing their supply station and treating themselves to a feast of food. On August 29, Pope’s men attacked Jackson’s soldiers. The Confederate defensive was weak, and Pope fully believed he’d defeated Jackson. He even wired Washington of his victory. Then on the following day, the Confederates reinforced Jackson, defeating the Union’s forces. This battle became known as the Second Battle of Bull Run.
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WHEN MCCLELLAN CONTINUED to be a hesitant leader, Lincoln replaced him with Major General Ambrose Burnside. But in December 1862, Lee defeated Burnside at Fredericksburg, Virginia, south of the Rappahannock River, in a long day of needless slaughter. Refusing to heed the warnings of fellow generals, Burnside sent his troops into Lee’s fire.
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LINCOLN RELIEVED BURNSIDE of his command and put Major General Joseph Hooker in place. “Fighting Joe,” as he was called, set off to outfox Lee in late April 1863. He jumped most of his troops upstream of Lee’s forces on the Rappahannock, but Hooker must have gotten spooked, for he quickly ordered his men onto the defensive. Now Lee had the advantage and used it, striking hard. The fighting was so intense that fire erupted in the dry leaves and brush, choking the battle lines with smoke and burning some soldiers alive. Hooker pulled back his army across the Rappahannock, having lost 17,000 of his fighting force.
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LINCOLN RELIEVED HOOKER and Pope of their command, giving McClellan, or “Little Mac,” another chance to fend off Lee’s troops. Luckily for McClellan, a Confederate soldier left behind a precious piece of military intelligence—General Lee’s troop orders. But in another surprise, a Southern sympathizer tipped off General Lee that the North knew of his plans. As a result, Lee pulled back his forces, and instead of attacking quickly, the cautious-as-ever McClellan hesitated, believing that Lee outnumbered him. In the fighting that September 1862, McClellan drove Lee back into Virginia in the bloodiest one-day battle ever fought. The Battle of Antietam, or Sharpsburg as the South called it, cost both sides dearly, but the outcome was Union victory.
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ON JULY 3, 1863, at 1 P.M., Confederates opened an artillery bombardment—with 175 cannons firing on the Union line—during the Battle of Gettysburg. General Pickett, with a fresh division, led a charge on Cemetery Ridge. The Union army fired on the Confederate troops, inflicting heavy casualties. The bloody charge failed to crack General Meade’s line. The Confederates fell back, having lost nearly three-fourths of their ranks. Pickett’s charge ensured that the Battle of Gettysburg was just about over. Indeed, on the evening of July 4, General Lee began retreating to Virginia.
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BY SUMMER 1863, General Lee’s army was at its fighting peak, anxious to threaten northern territory. Lee commanded his army through Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in order to march further north. Lee tried to get General Richard Ewell to seize Cemetery Hill, just south of the town, but Ewell was too cautious, and the Union set up a line along the ridges during the night. Confederates did capture Devil’s Den, a boulder-strewn area in front of the hill known as Little Round Top. Had they put cannons atop Little Round Top, they could have blasted the Union line. Once the Rebels were spotted, however, fighting recommenced, and Little Round Top was saved.
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DURING AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER 1862, the Confederate army invaded Kentucky, a slave state that had not seceded from the Union. Kentuckians were divided, and it wasn’t uncommon to have people from the same community enlist in both the Confederate and Union armies. They clashed at the Battle of Perryville on October 8, 1862. Neither side could claim victory, but the Confederates retreated.
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GENERAL LONGSTREET OF the Confederacy had warned Lee not to attack the Union’s center of the line. On the third day, in what became known as Pickett’s Charge, Confederates opened a huge artillery bombardment concentrating on the line’s center. This lapse in judgment forced Lee to retreat back across the Potomac. At Gettysburg the Union fielded 83,300 men and sustained 23,000 casualties. The Confederacy fielded 75,100 men and sustained 28,100 casualties.
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LINCOLN WAS CALLED upon to deliver just a few appropriate remarks on November 19, 1863, to dedicate a military cemetery at Gettysburg. He delivered his remarks following those of Edward Everett, a distinguished speaker in his own right. Though Lincoln’s speech was much more concise than the two-hour oration Everett rendered, the president’s remarks were profound and masterful, imparting another persuasive vision for America.
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THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS was only 284 words long. Lincoln got up and gave the speech so quickly that the photographer assigned to cover the event didn’t have enough time to change the film in his camera before Lincoln had sat down again.
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ONE PERSISTENT MYTH is that Lincoln composed the speech while riding on the train from Washington to Gettysburg and wrote it on the back of an envelope or a napkin. This story is at odds with the existence of several early drafts and the reports of Lincoln’s final editing while a guest of David Wills in Gettysburg.
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LINCOLN, UNDER MUCH pressure from abolitionists, saw his main objective as saving the Union, regardless of how the slavery issue played out. With the political climate simply too volatile, Lincoln trod carefully so as not to offend slaveholding Border States, very key to the North. Kentucky was one of these. Because of its strategic location on the Ohio River, it had to remain in the Union. Besides, in his inaugural address, Lincoln had promised not to interfere with slavery. To do so would have meant additional states joining the Confederacy.
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ON APRIL 16, 1862, Lincoln signed a bill abolishing slavery in Washington, DC. Lincoln wanted to free all the slaves in the seceding states, but Secretary of State William Seward advised him to make such a momentous announcement only after a Union victory. When the Battle of Antietam brought that opportunity, and as he became more confident of Border State support, Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation. On September 22, 1862, he announced that on January 1, 1863, all slaves residing in the Confederate states would be free.
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LINCOLN PUSHED FOR the Thirteenth Amendment, which made up for the limitations of the Emancipation Proclamation: it barred slavery from the United States in perpetuity. Later, it became a condition that Southern states had to accept the amendment to be readmitted to the Union. It became law in January 1865.
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THE PROCLAMATION DIDN’T apply to the Border States, which were not in rebellion against the Union, though Lincoln did urge voluntary compensated emancipation. In fact, Lincoln did not have the power to free slaves except under the powers granted during war to seize enemy property. As president, he had to abide by the Constitution, which protected slavery in slave states. Due to their rebellion, he could act in states that had seceded. The 100-day warning in the proclamation was intended to give Rebel states ample opportunity to rejoin the Union with slavery intact.
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WHEN ABRAHAM LINCOLN was working on drafts of his Emancipation Proclamation, he had the foresight to say, “If my name ever goes down into history, it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it.” Drafted in 1862, it went into effect by presidential signature on New Year’s Day, 1863.
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USUALLY, LINCOLN SIGNED bills in abbreviated form using “A. Lincoln.” However, he signed his full signature onto the Emancipation Proclamation, and said to those cabinet officers standing near, “Gentlemen, I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right than in signing this paper.”
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FURTHER ALONG IN his address, Lincoln invited slaves to join the Union army. By the end of the Civil War, one Union soldier in eight was African American. This hastened the South’s demise, and foreign governments (namely France and Great Britain) took notice as well.
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THE DRAFT (CONSCRIPTION) began in 1862 when the Confederacy called all men between eighteen and forty-five to serve in the army. In March 1863, the Union passed a similar act calling men between twenty and forty-five into military service. However, you could hire a substitute or pay $300 instead.
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THE UNION FACED additional burdens with financing the war. As a result, new federal taxes were levied on inheritances, legal documents, and personal income. The government also printed paper money, dubbed “greenbacks” because of the color. By 1863, $450 million worth of greenbacks were in use. The value of these greenbacks varied and was usually lower than that of gold.
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LINCOLN EASILY WON the 1864 election against Democratic candidate General McClellan. McClellan’s followers felt Lincoln unjustly relieved him of his military command following Antietam. Showing himself to be a staunch fighter, McClellan ignored his party’s platform, which called for the war’s immediate end. Instead, he urged that the fighting continue. Lincoln chose Andrew Johnson as his vice president and ran on the platform of abolishing slavery and ending the war.
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ON THE DAY Lee withdrew his forces from Gettysburg, Lincoln received word that General Ulysses S. Grant had captured Vicksburg, Mississippi, a key Confederate fort along the Mississippi River. Indeed the Battle of Vicksburg had spilled over from October 1862 until July of 1863. With no relief army in sight, the Confederates had asked Grant for surrender terms, and on July 4, 1863, the Rebels stacked their arms before marching out of their fallen city. Grant’s victory opened the Mississippi River to the Union and effectively broke the Confederate army in two.
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BY THE END OF 1863, the Union had achieved two main objectives—control of the Mississippi River, which split the South in two, and a strangling blockade of Southern ports. Severely lacking, however, was a coordinated strategy to finish the war, until in March 1864, Lincoln selected General Ulysses S. Grant to command the Northern troops.
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GENERAL GRANT GAVE General William Tecumseh Sherman full command of the West, while he himself moved east to lead Meade’s Army of the Potomac against General Lee’s Confederate forces. His strategy: attack the South’s strong armies rather than take key Southern cities. While Grant would focus on Lee, Sherman’s march through Georgia went after General Joe Johnston’s force of 45,000 men. While en route, he hoped to destroy much of the Confederate infrastructure, especially the vital rail and industrial strength of Atlanta.
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ON SEPTEMBER 1, 1864, Sherman succeeded in his mission, sending a telegram to the president that “Atlanta is ours.” The capture did much to solidify Lincoln’s re-election.
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LEE’S ARMY OF Northern Virginia spent much of the fall and winter of 1864–65 hunkered down in trenches. In March 1865, he decided to attack the Union’s Fort Stedman long enough to divert Grant and, he hoped, effect an escape to join Joseph E. Johnston’s forces farther south. But the attempt failed, and Lee took his dwindling troops toward Lynchburg. The Rebel lines collapsed at Sailor’s Creek, and finally, desertion, disease, near-starvation, and the Union’s relentless attacks brought the Confederacy to its knees.
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IN A QUIET country village near a rail stop, General Robert E. Lee brought his weary regiments into the Appomattox Courthouse. Calling a truce, Lee asked for a meeting with Grant to discuss surrender terms. On the afternoon of April 9, 1865, the two generals met at the home of Virginian Wilmer McLean. While they chatted about the Mexican War initially, Grant knew that whatever they discussed regarding the Civil War’s end would have a profound effect on the country’s restoration.
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IN HIS OFFER TO LEE, Grant stated that Confederate forces could keep their own horses, baggage, and sidearms, returning home with the assurance that U.S. authorities would not harm them. Grant even made arrangements to feed Lee’s troops before the two parted.
Lee’s army stacked its arms and surrendered battle flags on April 12, 1865, though it took until June for all Confederate forces to lay down their arms.
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THE SENATE AND House passed the Thirteenth Amendment, eliminating slavery in 1864 and 1865, respectively, while the country was still waging war. Those states that had seceded had to approve of the amendment in order to be readmitted to the Union.
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AFTER THE WAR, the Republican majority in Congress pushed through the Fourteenth Amendment, which defined American citizenship to include all former slaves and declared that individual states could not unlawfully deny citizens their rights and privileges. Just like the amendment that had preceded it, seceding states had to adopt the Fourteenth Amendment to be readmitted. The required three-fourths of the states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment on July 9, 1868, though the measure had passed Congress two years earlier.
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THE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT, granting African American men the right to vote, also took a two-year path to ratification. It was presented to the states in 1868, and Southern states grudgingly passed the measure. Years later (in the 1890s), former Confederate states required African Americans to take literacy tests as a requirement for voting. Since few slaves were literate at the time, this all but eliminated voting among this group until a more modern civil rights movement protested these strictures in subsequent years.
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THE CIVIL WAR took more than 600,000 lives, destroyed property valued at $5 billion, and created social wounds that never completely healed. It did, however, end slavery, making many believe the moral objectives of the war were indeed accomplished.
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ON GOOD FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 1865, Lincoln and his wife, along with General and Mrs. Grant, were to attend a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC. Although the Grants could not attend, the Lincolns went to the theater with their other guests. At approximately 10:30 P.M. and at a planned moment when all eyes were focused on the stage, John Wilkes Booth, a Southern sympathizer, crept into the poorly protected presidential box and fired his pistol at Lincoln’s head just once.
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LINCOLN’S BODY WAS taken to a lodging house across the street, where Mrs. Lincoln, cabinet members, and friends waited through the night for doctors to perform a miracle that never happened. On Saturday, April 15, 1865, Lincoln was pronounced dead, and within hours, Vice President Andrew Johnson was sworn in as president. This marked the first presidential assassination in the United States.
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LINCOLN’S BODY LAY in state in the East Room of the White House. On April 19, he was given a military funeral in Washington, and two days later, his coffin was placed on a special train that carried his body back to Springfield, Illinois, for burial in Oak Ridge Cemetery. The slain president’s funeral procession retraced the route he’d initially taken to reach Washington for his inauguration in 1861.
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JOHN WILKES BOOTH was a vengeful, half-crazed actor from a fairly famous theatrical family who had planned for some time to kidnap the president and take him to Richmond. There, he hoped to exchange him for captured Confederate prisoners of war. However, when that city fell and with the conflict now resolved, Booth resorted to murder, claiming that he was God’s instrument to punish Lincoln for all the trouble he had caused the country.
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ON THE SAME day that Booth shot Lincoln, friends of Booth made attempts on Secretary Seward’s life, but he lived. In fact, one friend was to have carried out a plan to assassinate Vice President Johnson, but decided against it.
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BOOTH ESCAPED WITH the help of friends and an unsuspecting physician who tended his injuries, but he was discovered twelve days later in a shack near Bowling Green, Virginia. When he refused to surrender to authorities, they set the barn ablaze. Some say that Booth was struck by a sniper’s shot, and others assert that he pulled a gun on himself. Regardless, Booth was dragged out of the inferno and died shortly thereafter. His coconspirators went on trial for aiding the assassin. They were tried, and convicted, by a military tribunal rather than a civil court.
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MARY ELIZABETH JENKINS SURRATT was an American boarding house owner who was convicted of taking part in the conspiracy to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. She was the first woman in the United States to be executed.