Civil War Final

Self-Emancipation

"Self-emancipation" refers to the thousands of slaves who actively escaped bondage during the Civil War. Well before the Emancipation Proclamation, thousands of slaves had asserted their claim to freedom by leaving their masters. The first opportunity to do so presented itself in the form of large encampments of Union soldiers in slave states still loyal to the Union (Free at last, 13-14). The presence of thousands of "contrabands" in the camps forced the government to carefully consider its position on the question of slavery; it was difficult to claim that the war was simply for Union if generals refused to return slaves to loyal Union masters. The strength of the argument that slaves were responsible in part for their own emancipation is enhanced by the enrollment of blacks, many of them former slaves, in the Union army after the Emancipation Proclamation.

Harpers Ferry Raid

16 October 1860, extreme abolitionist John Brown and eighteen followers captured the Federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, with the intention of rallying local slaves to an armed insurrection against slavery in general. Impractical and spontaneous, the plan quickly failed and Brown's group was overwhelmed by troops under Robert E. Lee. Though utterly ineffective as a revolutionary, Brown's straightforward manner and total conviction during his trial and before his execution persuaded many in the North that he was at worst a misguided idealist and at best a martyred crusader for the cause of freedom. Southerners were enraged, first by news of his action and even more so by the sympathetic position taken by many Northerners. Slaveholders viewed this as an open endorsement of a direct, violent attack on the core of their society. John Brown's raid and subsequent speeches set the tone for a violent conclusion to decades of worsening sectional relations.

The Lost Cause

A romanticized reading of the Civil War, named by Edward Pollard and immortalized by Jubal Early. Perhaps finding its roots in Robert E. Lee's statement at the time of his surrender blaming the Confederacy's the defeat on the North's "overwhelming resources and numbers," The Lost Cause posits that a more-or-less unified South justifiably seceded to protect states' rights, not slavery, and was beaten despite prevalent chivalry and virtue because of the North's superior resources. This mythology is inherently anti-reconstructive, and limits the ideological ramifications of Southern loss by redefining in a very limited fashion what was at stake in the conflict. Lost Cause mythology speaks to the danger of revisionist history; not only is it almost certainly incorrect, but in its incorrectness has ramifications for the present. If the South was noble and doomed, the Civil War does not teach us what it needs to to be in any way worth its human cost. Much as the greatest victories of the Civil war were lost, or at least obscured, by the failures of Reconstruction, a Lost Cause reading of the War plays in to the revisionist memory and allows the greatest and most painful truths of the war to be forgotten. (From Wikipedia, see also The Confederate War pp.27, 188-189, 210, 168-171, 169-172)

Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address

Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address in Washington D.C. during his inauguration for his second term as President of the United States on March 4, 1865. Lincoln had given his first inaugural address at a time when Civil War seemed imminent, and he gave this address at a time when the end of the war, at long last, seemed near. In his speech, Lincoln brutally denounced slavery as an atrocity for which the country must pay with blood. His words set a standard of presidential rhetoric that has seldom been equaled and never surpassed. Despite his condemnation of slavery, Lincoln promised a magnanimous peace, "with malice toward none; with charity for all." Lincoln's remarkable generosity toward the rebellious southerners looked forward to a peaceful reunion of the nation. By speeches such as this and by some of Lincoln's plans for Reconstruction, such as the 10% Plan, it seems that Lincoln's strategies for Reconstruction would have been quick and lenient. This historic speech foreshadowed the possibility that, had Lincoln not been murdered, the history of the United States and of its Reconstruction could have been quite different.

Emancipation Proclamation

Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation declared that all slaves in specified regions—primarily those not under Union control—were henceforth free. It was issued soon after the Union victory at Antietam. The Proclamation was important for many reasons. It signaled that the Civil War was being fought not only for the sake of Union, but for the end of the institution of slavery. Lincoln defended the issuance of the Emancipation in non-moral terms, arguing that the Emancipation was a war measure necessary for the reunification of the country. (Johnson, Lincoln book) Although Lincoln claimed the Proclamation wasn't issued on moral grounds, it served to solidify European support for the Union cause because public opinion in Europe was heavily against slavery. The 15th Amendment, passed in 1870, wrote the freedom promised in the Proclamation into the Constitution.

First Reconstruction Act

Act passed by the 39th United States Congress over President Johnson's veto on March 2, 1867. It divided the Confederate states, except for Tennessee, into five military districts each under commanders empowered to employ the army to protect life and property. Also, without immediately replacing the Johnson regimes, it laid out the steps by which new governments could be created and recognized by Congress: the writing of new constitutions providing for manhood suffrage, their approval by a majority of voters, and the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. Like many of the acts of the 39th Congress in Congressional Reconstruction, this act contained a mixture of idealism and political expediency. For Radicals, it represented the culmination of a lifetime of reform - black suffrage was indeed a stunning and pivotal advancement of civil rights in the United States. The act also served as an alternative to prolonged federal intervention in the South, establishing military rule only temporarily and for the sake of peacekeeping. The act looked to a new political order for the reconstructed South. Despite the progressive nature of the act, it also represents one of the main problems of reconstruction legislature - enfranchisement was not the only thing that African Americans needed to be able to reap the benefits of being true American citizens.

Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

After two failed attempts by Congressional Republicans to impeach President Andrew Johnson, whose reconstruction policies were at odds with those of the Radicals and moderate Republicans in Congress, the House finally voted eleven impeachment charges against the President in early 1868. Among the charges were denying the authority of and disgracing Congress, violating the Tenure of Office Act by dismissing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, and violating the Command of the Army Act by ordering General Lorenzo Thomas to accept orders not sent through General-in-chief U.S. Grant (Foner 143). Congressional Republicans were moved to impeach Johnson by a number of motivations, including Johnson's irreverent treatment of Congress, Republicans' desire to make a Republican—Senate President Pro Tem Benjamin Wade—the President, and their fundamental disagreement with Johnson over the issue of Reconstruction. Johnson's staunch white supremacism, and his belief that only the president had the authority to regulate the internal affairs of the southern states (which had never technically seceded and were still intact, in his mind), was incompatible with Republicans' belief in civil and political equality for blacks, and their belief that Congress had authority over the "conquered territories" of the former Confederacy (which had relinquished their status as states by seceding). (Lecture 4/14). The final vote in the Senate to impeach Johnson in May 1868 failed by one vote, following an agreement between the Republicans and Johnson that Republicans would acquit the President in exchange for Johnson's no longer impeding Congressional Reconstruction. Impeachment failed due to a number of factors, including the flimsy nature of the impeachment charges, the belief of leading Republicans that such an aggressive act as impeachment would hurt their chances in the 1868 elections, and the reluctance of many to have Radical Ben Wade become President (Lecture 4/14). Thus, while Republicans were motivated by their reconstruction aims to impeach Johnson, their desire for success in the upcoming elections led them to agree to acquit the President. The triumph of the pragmatic congressional Republicans—and their rejection of the possibility of making Wade president—strengthened the hand of party moderates and ensured the nomination of U.S. Grant for the presidency—and the beginning of the end of Reconstruction.

Missouri Compromise

Also know as the compromise of 1820, the compromise was engineered by Henry Clay and involved the prohibition of slavery above the 36'30" line, except within the state boundaries of Missouri. The act set a geographical precedent for dealing with slavery issues, which would be challenged in the aftermath of the Mexican War and the compromise of 1850, which allowed California to enter as a free state and set up a system of popular sovereignty in the new territories. The conditions of the Missouri compromise were unable to keep up with the issues the states and federal government faced with the admission of new territories and new states.

United States v. Cruikshank

An 1876 decision by the US Supreme Court, stemming from the Colfax massacre, which said that the Reconstruction amendments only allowed the Federal government to prevent States from impinging on black rights, while it was the province of the States to protect against crimes committed by individuals. The decision therefore overturned convictions of participants in the massacre obtained under the Enforcement Act. This decision made it impossible for the Federal government to prosecute acts of violence against blacks, and left freedmen in the hands of hostile local governments, clearing the way for a reign of terror and effectively ensuring the non-enforcement of black rights in the South for almost a century. Along with the Slaughterhouse Cases, Cruikshank severely restricted the scope of protections afforded to freedmen under the Reconstruction amendments, reading them so narrowly as to make them effectively meaningless until the Civil Rights movement. (Foner 224)

Fifteenth Amendment

Approved by Congress in 1869 and ratified in 1870, the 15th Amendment prohibited disenfranchisement based on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude," supposedly settling the question of black suffrage and consequently providing the Republican party with a large and reliable foothold in the South. Unfortunately, the amendment was worded so loosely (to prevent the extension of suffrage to "undesirables" like certain immigrants, former Confederates, and the Chinese) that it did not do much to actually protect black voting rights in the South. Poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and other ingenious methods were devised to disenfranchise blacks for reasons not explicitly racial. The amendment also said nothing about the right to hold office, and unlike the 14th amendment, did not look beyond race; this caused a rupture in the longstanding alliance between abolitionists and feminists, who opposed the amendment with increasingly racist rhetoric. While the 15th amendment did enshrine black suffrage in the Constitution, it left open the possibility of mass disenfranchisement of blacks; it again took a century before the words of the amendment took on practical meaning in the South. (Foner 183,191-93).

Free Labor Ideology

Associated with the white Northern workforce, the free-labor ideology, as Foner argues, dominated thinking in the North, which emphasized economic opportunity. Rooted in industry, the North and its free laborers, by being able to choose their work and labor for wages, would have more incentive to be productive and therefore experience 'freedom' (economic freedom) as the framers of the constitution originally intended. Free labor was the platform that many abolitionists used in their fight against slavery because it was fair and provided equal opportunities. By contrast, Southerners described free labor as "greasy mechanics, filthy operators, small-fisted farmers, and moonstruck theorists". Southerners strongly opposed the homestead laws that were proposed to give free farms in the west, fearing the small farmers would oppose plantation slavery. Free labor ideology was the enemy of pro-slavery ideology because slaveholders feared that free laborers would take the land designated for plantations and work it themselves, which would reduce the need for slaves and extinguish the expansion of slavery.

Grant Administration Scandals

Began with the Credit Mobilier scandal of 1872, in which a "dummy corporation was formed by an inner ring of Union Pacific stockholders to build the government-assisted line at an enormous profit," facilitated buying influential Republican congressmen with shares in the company (and reaching as high up as Grant's Vice-Presidents Colfax and Wilson); continuing with corruption scandals in 1876 involving Secretary of War Belknap receiving kickbacks and Grant's private secretary Orville Babcock participating in "the Whiskey Rings" that "looted millions of dollars in Federal internal revenue." The earliest scandals contributed to the sense of Republicans, and by extension Reconstruction, as corrupt and less than pure in motivation; this impression gave Democrats a credible (not explicitly racist) platform to reenter the national political scene and set the stage for the Democratic landslide of 1874, in which a 110-seat Republican majority in the House became a 60-seat Democratic majority, which provided definitive end to the Radical Reconstruction period and began the Republican party's retreat from Reconstruction. The later scandals lead to Rutherford B. Hayes being named the Republican nominee in 1876, by virtue of his freedom from the taint of corruption; Hayes completed the betrayal of Reconstruction, and concluded the process by which the Republicans abandoned the freedmen for a generation, to refocus on economic issues. (Foner 202, 239)

Sherman's March to the Sea

Campaign launched by General William Tecumseh Sherman's army immediately after the capture of Atlanta during the late summer, fall, and winter of 1864 to cut through the Georgia countryside to reach Savannah on the Atlantic Ocean. Realizing that remaining in Atlanta would leave his supply lines vulnerable to Confederate cavalry attacks, Sherman decided to abandon the city and rampage through Georgia, gathering the supplies necessary to furnish the army along the way. Sherman's march to the sea represents the best example of total war employed by any army during the Civil War, as he strove to cripple the Confederacy by attacking its armies but by destroying its sources of supplies such as food and clothing. Sherman made civilians who had never directly attacked his army targets of his campaign by attacking the farms and railroads of Georgia, fulfilling one of the essential criteria of a total war. By taking the supplies meant for Confederate soldiers and using them to feed his own army, Sherman hindered the Confederate war effort greatly. After reaching Savannah, Sherman continued his total war campaign, moving through South Carolina and reaching North Carolina by the Civil War's end.

Confederate Nationalism

Confederate Nationalism was a belief in the cause of the Confederacy that compelled many southern men to join the ranks of the Confederate Army, and many on the home front—both women and men alike—to at least initially subscribe to the war effort and sustain heavy losses. Confederate Nationalism, accompanied with war fever, initially swept the south during the period of secession and mobilization, and was fomented by the heated rhetoric of the southern secession commissioners. However, the south was in no way monolithic and significant populations of Union sympathizers existed within the south throughout the war. Confederate Nationalism began to wane during the end of the war as casualties increased and poverty and destruction began to permeate the south. This disillusionment with the Confederate cause was manifested by the mass desertions of the Confederate Army following the long sieges and losses at Atlanta and Petersburg.

14th Amendment

Congress approved the Fourteenth Amendment in June of 1866. (Foner 114). The first clause of the amendment prohibited states from denying equality before the law. The second clause authorized a reduction in a state's representation proportional to the number of male citizens that were not given suffrage. While before Civil War, 3/5 of slaves had been included when calculating Congressional representation, now, since they were free, all blacks would be counted. The third clause prohibited men who had sworn allegiance to the Constitution and then supported the Confederacy from holding positions of national and state office. Unionists hoped that this would (although not denying former Confederates of the right to vote) exclude from office most of the South's antebellum political leadership and promote true Unionist leadership. The amendment gave constitutional authority to equality before the law, enforced by national government. The language of the amendment was elusive, but the purpose of the amendment seen in the context of the politics of 1866 can be understood. There was a break with President Johnson, a need to find some way to unify all Republicans, a growing desire within the party to have strong federal action to protect the rights of freedmen. The central aim of the amendment was to guarantee equality before the law. This piece of legislature changed and extended the meaning of freedom for all Americans. It was thought that this amendment was necessary because all of the liberties of the Bill of Rights was being violated in the South in 1866.

Contraband

Contraband is a term that was used before the Emancipation Proclamation to refer to slaves who had escaped or been taken from their masters. The term originated with Brigadier General Benjamin Butler, who proposed that escaped slaves of Confederate masters should not be returned because they could be used for the prosecution of the war against the Union. (Free at Last) The term "contraband", however, was problematic.

Stephen Douglas

Douglas was instrumental in the congressional process behind getting the elements of the Compromise of 1850 passed. He made sure that each provision was voted on individually, and was able to strike a series of deals with powerful politicians. He also proposed the Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854, and was a firm believer in the power of popular sovereignty to remove the slavery issue from national politics. Once the Act failed to do this and violence broke out, Douglas attempted to repeal Kansas' pro-slavery constitution. In the senate he served as chairman of the committee on territories, and won the senate race against Lincoln in 1858, after the famous Lincoln-Douglas Debates. He would later lose the Presidential Election of 1860 to Lincoln, while running as a Northern Democrat.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a leading abolitionist and women's rights leader during the 19th century around the time of the Civil War and following Reconstruction. Stanton may be most well known for her involvement in the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, one of the first meetings of leaders in the Women's rights movement. Stanton was also very involved in the growing movement for the freedom of slaves before the war, however, she is also known for her opposition of the 14th and 15th amendments because of the absence of women from receiving voting rights under the new amendments. Stanton and fellow female leaders such as Susan B. Anthony opposed the amendments because of the inclusion of the word "male" in the language of the amendments. Feminist leaders felt betrayed by this exclusion, because throughout the pre-war years Women's rights movements were closely related to abolition movements. This anger caused the Women's rights movement to move away from its alliance with abolition, causing Stanton to make racist remarks referring to why should an inferior society be given an advantage over the ranks of women who held wealth and power. Out of the anger caused by the awarding of voting rights to all men, Stanton and her fellow feminists formed new organizations based solely on the idea of independent feminism. Sources: Foner (115, 192-93) ; Battle Cry (36); Gienapp (360).

Popular Sovereignty

Emerging in 1846 in the wake of the Mexican-American War, the doctrine of popular sovereignty became the idealist method of solving the slavery question in the new territories. It gained popularity from politicians, especially Stephen A. Douglas, as Congressional attempts to solve the slavery issue in new territories failed. Popular sovereignty was seen as the intermediary between slaveholders and abolitionists, and it was the belief that the only fair way to settle the slavery issue was by self-determination, letting the people decide. However, corruption, taking the form of voting fraud, was prevalent in the popular sovereignty referendums, and effectively rendered the votes almost entirely meaningless. Thus while attractive in theory, popular sovereignty was another failed attempt at solving the slavery controversy.

Shiloh

Fought on April 6-7, 1862, the battle of Shiloh began when confederate forces under the command of General Albert Sidney Johnston attacked a Union army under the command of General Ulysses S. Grant near a log church in southwestern Tennessee, catching the Northern forces by surprise and inflicting heavy casualties. The Confederate army failed to finish off the Union forces, however, and Union reinforcements under the command of General Don Carlos Buell arrived overnight. The additional soldiers turned the tide of the battle in favor of the Union army, which drove the Confederates from the field and killed General Johnston the next day. Shiloh was the first of many Civil War battles to produce staggering amounts of casualties, totaling about 23,000 between both armies. The carnage at Shiloh convinced any last doubters that the Civil War would be much longer and bloodier than the initial predictions of a clean ninety-day war. Shiloh's location revealed the Union strategy in the western theater, as it lay on the Tennessee River and close to the important railway junction of Corinth, Mississippi. By defeating the Confederate army at Shiloh, the Union forces moved closer to fulfilling their goal of cutting the Confederacy in two by controlling major rivers and railroads. Finally, Shiloh convinced General Grant that the war could only be won by conquest, a strategy he employed in his Overland Campaign of 1864-65, as he waged a war of attrition to crush Lee's army

Garrison Frazier

Garrison Frazier was a Baptist Minister from Georgia who purchased his freedom at the age of 59. He is best remembered for his role in the meeting, which took place in Savannah, Georgia in 1865, between Secretary of War Stanton, General Sherman, and twenty black leaders. At the meeting, Frazier was asked a variety of questions not only about the logistical problems faced by blacks, but also about the meaning of the Civil War. When asked to define freedom, Frazier emphasized the importance of both having unfettered access to the fruit of their own labor and owning land. His answers also demonstrated the willingness of blacks to fight for the Union cause. (Free at Last passages) The meeting between Frazier, Stanton, and Sherman has been referred to as one place to mark the end of the Civil War. (Blight)

General Benjamin Butler

Hugely politically controversial general, who treated slaves as contraband and therefore justified their freedom. Was, for a time, the military leader of New Orleans until he was removed for declaring that women who disrespected officers were now prostitutes. Denounced by Jeff Davis as a felon who deserved capital punishment if captured. Later a radical republican from 67 to 75. Wrote the civil rights act of 1871 and proposed along with Charles Sumner the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Although this act did not pass, it was the precursor to the law passed in 1964. So What: Butler was a figure who was a thorn in the side of the South. He, moreover, moved from Democratic views before the war, to those of a radical republican following the conclusion of the war itself, becoming a strong advocate for both civil rights and r-n. Butler was an able, though eratic administrator, and a less able military person, however, he was a strong embodiment both of radical republicanism and someone who staunchly supports civil rights. However, Butler, as we know from Redemption, was also a man who valued political power, and this must not be overlooked when considering his actions.

Loss of Will Thesis

Idea that the Confederacy lost the Civil War because its people lacked a strong sense of belief in its national government. According to Drew Gilpin Faust, a study of upper-class women of the Confederacy reveals that these women lost the will to contribute to the war effort because they tired of the endless sacrifices asked of them in the name of patriotism. Faust notes that women resisted sacrificing their husbands, sons, or brothers to a military effort that seemed increasingly futile, while shortages of basic supplies such as food and clothing due to Union military campaigns instigated rioting in major southern cities. A counterpoint to Faust's argument is provided by Gary Gallagher, who, after studying the diaries of members of the officer corps of the Army of Northern Virginia, concluded that no such loss of will affected the Confederacy. Gallagher argues that the Confederate people venerated Lee's army and instead of placing their trust in the government. The Confederate people considered Lee's army representative of their cause, the gallant, outnumbered force struggling against a stronger army, just as Washington's army fought the British during the American Revolution, and as long as Lee's army fought, the Confederacy maintained its will. The loss of will thesis attempts to explain why the South lost the Civil War, and it is just one explanation of that outcome (others include the superior industrial capacity of the North, the success of the Northern blockade, and the failure of the South to attract any foreign support for its cause.

Adelbert and Blanche Ames

In 1868, Adelbert Ames was appointed by Congress to be provisional Governor of Mississippi and his command soon extended to the Fourth Military District, which consisted of Mississippi and Arkansas. He is also the central protagonist in Nicholas Lemann's book, Redemption. During his administration, he took several steps to advance the rights of freed slaves, appointing the first black office-holders in state history. Lemann, in Redemption, presents Ames's political rise in counterpoint with his courtship of Blanche Butler of Massachusetts, whom he married in 1870. The Ameses' marriage had important political implications because Blanche's father was the Radical Republican congressman Benjamin F. Butler. White supremacist violence was prevalent in Mississippi, one of the last states to comply with Reconstruction. In fact, paramilitary white supremacists forced Ames to resign his governorship by almost impeaching him after they assured that Democrats took control of the state legislature. The story of Ames's life in Redemption offers a vigorous, necessary reminder of how racist reactions bred an American terrorism that suppressed black political activity and crushed Reconstruction in the South. It also illuminates the often bloody fights over black voting rights that would recur for a century to come.

Field Order 15

Issued by General William T. Sherman on January 16, 1865 after a meeting with Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and twenty black leaders in Savannah during his march towards Atlanta. The Order set aside 400,000 acres of land, confiscated from former Confederates, for the settlement of blacks and by June, nearly 40,000 blacks were settled on this land. However, this promise of "40 acres and a mule" was revoked by President Andrew Johnson, and the land was returned Southern Planters. Field Order 15 mirrored the sentiments of many of Reconstruction's advocates that land ownership was essential to true freedom for blacks, and its revocation marked a major failure of Reconstruction to assist African Americans. (Foner 32, 71-72)

James Longstreet

James Longstreet was a Confederate general from South Carolina (and also veteran of the Mexican War) who later joined the Republican Party during Reconstruction and later became the Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire under President Hayes and U.S. Commissioner of Railroads under McKinley and TR. Longstreet was also cousins-in-law with Ulysses S. Grant, with whom he shared an old friendship. Longstreet was famous for claiming that he disagreed with Lee's offensive tactics during the Gettysburg campaign and the second invasion of the North. However, many advocates of the "Lost Cause" discredit Longstreet, blaming the loss at Gettysburg on his initial hesitation to order Pickett's charge.

Roger Taney

Justice of the Supreme Court most famous for delivering the Ded Scott Decision in 1857. The case was a huge setback for abolitionists, as it rule that blacks had no rights as citizens, had no right to sue in a federal court, and that freed slaves had no rights beyond the rights given in slave states. The decision charged that congress had no power to exclude slavery from the territories, and perhaps most strinkingly, the decision included language that Blacks has always been considered inferior in America and that as such would never be allowed the same rights as citizens. The decision destroyed hopes for moderation, and many in the north vowed not to enforce the conditions of the decision. Precedent of the 14th amendment.

King Cotton Diplomacy

King Cotton Diplomacy is the term that is applied to the Confederate effort to obtain Britain's (and to a lesser extent, France's) aid by withholding cotton crops from trade. The highly touted persuasive power of the Southern cash crop failed for several reasons. The Europeans attached Southern cotton to slavery, which was becoming abhorrent. Also, the British found new sources of cotton in India and Egypt and British merchants already had a surplus of cotton from the 1860 glut. King Cotton Diplomacy was an integral part of the original Confederate strategy. Its failure caused the loss of a military, and more importantly—an economic, ally in the Civil War. King Cotton Diplomacy also represented the Confederate's battle for foreign intervention, which was carefully countered by Lincoln in many political situations.

Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott was a novelist and a Union nurse during the Civil War. Her letters home as a Georgetown nurse were compiled, revised, and published as Hospital Sketches in 1863 - a work that portrayed the demanding and frequently gruesome life of nurses and doctors in war hospitals. In doing so, it also brought into the public light the essential yet sometimes thankless role that women played in the both the northern and southern war efforts. This general concern for the role of women resulted in her later activism in the women's suffrage movement; she was the first woman to register to vote in Concord, Mass. In 1868, Louisa May Alcott wrote her most famous work, Little Women. Alcott died in 1888 of mercury poisoning that she contracted during her work as a war nurse 25 years earlier.

Secession Commissioners

Men sent out by the various Southern state legislatures to campaign for the cause of secession in 1860-61. Each of them a prominent citizen in the sending state and a native son of the one he visited, these commissioners urged their audiences to join the cause of the South in upholding their sacred liberties and rights to property (i.e. slavery). Their speeches were aimed at persuading states more reluctant to secede - North Carolina, Georgia, Maryland, and more northerly states - that all hope of peaceful compromise had been exhausted, and that the only way to preserve Southern honor and customs was to leave the United States, now dominated by a tyrannical abolitionist power. The commissioners exploited deep fears of racial equality and "amalgamation" to underscore the future of a South still tied to the Union. Their work ensured that the Deep South was not alone in its rebellion, and gave the future Confederacy a fighting chance in terms of the manufacturing and industrial power of border states like Virginia.

Siege of Atlanta

Military campaign by the Union Military Division of the Mississippi under the command of General William Tecumseh Sherman in the summer of 1864 to capture Atlanta, Georgia, defended by a Confederate army initially commanded by General Joseph Johnston and later commanded by General John Bell Hood. While Johnston's army slowed Sherman's advance by fighting a series of defensive battles, most notably at Kennesaw Mountain, the Confederates began to fight a series of offensive battles against the much larger Union army once Hood assumed command, and Sherman's forces easily defeated Hood's army by flanking Confederate positions instead of employing frontal assaults. Sherman's decision to besiege Atlanta represented the fulfillment of the Union strategy for the western theater, as Atlanta represented the last major railroad junction of the Confederacy, and its capture would prevent the Confederacy from sending supplies between its western and eastern fronts, greatly crippling its military operations. Additionally, Sherman's capture of Atlanta on September 2, 1864 provided a huge boost to Northern morale that assuaged war weariness and catapulted Abraham Lincoln to victory in the presidential election of November 1864.

Fredrick Douglass

One of the most prominent Black abolitionists and national figures of his time. Born a slave and mostly self-educated, he wrote several autobiographies, including Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass An American Slave. He became an amazingly accomplished orator, and spoke at abolitionist meetings across the North. He also published several abolitionist newspapers and collaborated with William Lloyd Garrison before spitting over issues of radicalism. Douglass also met with John Brown, and consulted with Lincoln during the war. Arguably the most prominent and respected Black figure during this time.

Pro-Slavery Ideology

Pro-slavery ideology developed in the South as abolitionism gained ground in the North as a means to justify the institution of slavery. Rooted in the ideas that slavery was beneficial for the slaves, the South, and the United States, pro-slavery ideology was supported by white supremacy and had religious justifications. Southerners such as Calhoun argued that slavery was "a positive good", and that slaves were more civilized and morally and intellectually improved because of slavery. Slavery advocates held a paternalistic view of the relationship between that of owner and slave, and argued that slaves were better off than Northern factory workers, who's living conditions that were less desirable and who's work was uncertain. To them slaves would always have food, shelter, and work. Southerners also held the belief that racial amalgamation would lead to an end to the white race, and thus in order to preserve purity, slavery was required. Pro-slavery ideology gained support in the North and South because a majority of white America held racial prejudices.

3. Thaddeus Stevens

Republican leader and one of the most powerful members of the United States House of Representatives. He was in office from 1859 until his death in 1868. Stevens and Senator Charles Sumner were the prime leaders of the Radical Republicans during the American Civil War and Reconstruction, and the Radical Republicans had full control of Congress after the 1866 elections. Stevens's actions largely set the course of Reconstruction. He wanted to begin to rebuild the South, using military power to force the South to recognize the equality of Freedmen. His power grew during Reconstruction as he dominated the House and helped to draft both the Fourteenth Amendment and the Reconstruction Act in 1867. When President Johnson resisted the radical legislature, Stevens proposed and passed the resolution for the impeachment of Andrew Johnson in 1868. Stevens contributed much of the energy and leadership that the Radical Republicans needed to be able to pass radical legislature during Congressional Reconstruction.

John Brown

Responsible for the Harpers Ferry raid of 1859, an elaborate plot to capture an arsenal and arm slaves to launch a massive rebellion against slave holders. The raid was ultimately an abysmal failure and Brown was captured after a lengthy stand off during which several men were killed. Browns ideology stemmed for a staunch Calvinist childhood, and by the late 1850s he was obsessed with ending slavery. He staged raids earlier and viewed himself as a moses figure, freeing slaves and bringing them North, though he was never really successful at doing this. His greatest power came from his execution, which polarized the Nation, and gave freesoilers in the North an iconic martyr figure, and Southerners an idea of the violence and danger of northern abolitionists. Also led to southern fear about the end of slavery on the eve of succession

Swing Around the Circle

The "swing around the circle" was President Andrew Johnson's trip around the country in the fall of 1866 as he campaigned for Democrats for the upcoming congressional elections. Using slogans such as "The Constitution as is, the Union as it was," but also directly insulting Republicans and making a spectacle of himself through sometimes-drunken tirades, Johnson's tour was an embarrassing disaster. Johnson's trip provoked the outrage of Republicans and solidified them further in opposition to himself and his reconstruction policies. Moreover, Johnson's failed trip contributed to the success of Republicans in the 1866 elections, and thus helped create a large, veto-proof majority of Congressional Republicans (Lecture 4/14). Thus, instead of improving his political position and his reconstruction policies, Johnson ensured that Congress would remain hostile to his presidency and his policies. Their newfound majority helped Republicans pass such measures as the Reconstruction Acts and impeachment charges against Johnson.

Second Confiscation Act

The 37th Congress passed the Second Confiscation Act in July 1862. The Act was designed to punish "traitors" by confiscating their property, including slaves, who under the terms of the Act were forever freed. (McPherson, 500) Because the federal courts were no longer operating in the Confederacy, the practical effect of the Act was to make Union lines a safe haven for escaped slaves. (Johnson, 194) The Act also authorized Lincoln to employ blacks in service roles for which they were found to be competent. The Act was one of several passed around that time that represented a turning point towards harsher war measures. In addition, the act was an important symbol of what the war was becoming, namely a "war to overturn the southern social order as a means of reconstructing the Union" (McPherson, 500). The Second Confiscation Act was an important milestone on the road to the Emancipation Proclamation.

Gettysburg

The Battle of Gettysburg occurred on July 1-3 1863, and marked the repulsion of Lee's second invasion of the North. It was a major victory the for the North, commanded by General George Meade, and a significant defeat for the south, with Lee going so far as to offer his resignation to Jeff Davis after his loss. The loss at Gettysburg not only turned back a battle-hardened and increasingly confident Southern army from bringing the conflict to the doorstep of the North - possibly even threatening a retreat from Washington by series of Southern victories from the interior of the North - but also served to strengthen the resolve of the Union army and northern home front. The battle is seen by many scholars of the Civil War as a major if not the definitive turning point of the war. Gettysburg is also the site of Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863 in which he described the war as a struggle for a new birth of freedom in America. Following the Battle of Gettysburg, the war returned to the Southern homefront, and eventually under the aggressive strategy led by Grant and Sherman, the North was able to secure victory.

Freedmen's Bureau

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, operational from June 1865 to December 1868, was a U. S. federal government agency initiated by President Lincoln that aided distressed refugees of the Civil War. The agency came to the aid of blacks and whites living in poverty, displacement, and often starvation after the war. It provided aid to former slaves and refugees through education, health care, and employment, and was one of Lincoln's key components to his plan for Reconstruction. At the end of the war, the Bureau's main role was providing emergency food, housing, and medical aid to refugees, though it also helped reunite families. Particularly in terms of an educational legacy, the Bureau established a number of historically black colleges and universities, many of which are still active. It also helped to establish to establish black churches where freedmen could go to worship away from the eyes of whites. President Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's successor, disbanded the Bureau in 1868.

Wartime Womanhood

The Civil War brought a change in gender roles as the volunteers went off to fight. Wartime womanhood was the term that applied to the changing responsibilities and norms for woman on the homefront. Women in the South had a more dramatic change in roles as they abandoned their submissive and dependent position and took on responsibility for tending the farm and/or controlling the slaves. In the North and South alike, women volunteered as nurses to support their nation's cause. In both the North and the South, women pleaded for their husbands to come home to relinquish them of their burdens, but part of their 'wartime womanhood' was encouraging their husbands and remaining determined in their independence on the homefront. Wartime womanhood is historically important because it is one of the first times the roles of women changed during war due to the dramatic number of husbands who enlist/volunteer. Also, the activism and independence which came to women during the war out of necessity contributed to the woman's suffrage movement after the war.

Election of 1864

The Election of 1864 was between Lincoln (Republican) and former Union General and Commander of the Army of the Potomac George McClellan (Democrat) and resulted in a resounding victory for the Lincoln, with the Republican ticket winning by a margin of 56%-44% and with the army voting 70% for Lincoln. The summer of 1864 had been a very low point for the Union—possibly the lowest point in the whole war—with Sherman bogged down outside of Atlanta and Grant outside of Petersburg, and with no end in sight Lincoln himself had even predicted his own defeat. Since McClellan and the Democrats essentially ran on a peace platform that called for a truce with the Confederates, the election itself was seen as a referendum on the war. But on September 1, two months before the election, the tide of the war turned in favor of the Union after Confederate General Hood fled Atlanta, leaving the materially and symbolically significant city to Sherman's army; Sherman then proceeded to begin his march of devastation through the Deep South. This turning of fortune shifted northern opinion in favor of Lincoln and paved the way for his victory.

The Ku KluxKlan

The Ku Klux Klan was a "social Club" started in Tennessee in 1866, but actually became a military force protecting the rights of Democrats, planters, and those interested in white supremacy The group spread to nearly every southern state and entered electoral politics during the Election of 1868. The group engaged in the killings of many republicans, black and white, "during their reign of terror." This original violence was supposed to help the Democratic presidential candidate Horatio Seymour. The influence of the KKK reached throughout the south creating fear in many of those who tried to aid the cause of the Freedmen. The initial members of the Klan were from very respectable demographics as well as fearful poor whites. The group viewed crimes against Freedmen and their supports less than a crime. The emergence of the KKK caused many reforms in the protection of freedmen. The Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 marked the first time that the federal government brought certain crimes committed by a person or group of people under federal law. The actions of the Klan brought government intervention to the aid of a terrorized group of people. But unfortunately the KKK showed how oppression through fear can cause many people to not exercise their right to vote. The KKK act also showed the expansion of the federal government into a jurisdiction it never before entered, an example of the strong central government born out of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Sources: Foner (146, 184-91, 195)

New York City Draft Riots

The New York City Draft Riots occurred during July 13-16 1863 in response to the first drawing of the Union draft on July 11. Under the Enrollment Act of Conscription passed on March 3, 1863, draftees who provided a paid substitute or $300 were exempted, and thus from its outset the draft was condemned by many Democratic politicians and lower-class immigrants as elitist. The rioters, made up mostly of Irish immigrants, initially attacked police stations, draft offices, and other symbols of authority, but the riot soon became racial in nature - rioters began to target blacks, black orphanages, and black churches. After four brutal and chaotic days, the riot was finally subdued by a regiment of New York troops that had just returned from the battle of Gettysburg. In total at least 100 people were killed in the riot and $1.5 million was lost in property damage. The New York City Draft Riots were significant because they manifested the significant and growing discontent felt towards the war by many on the home front, especially amongst lower-class immigrants and Democrats. The racial element of the riots was also important in that through the targeting and blaming of blacks, the rioters revealed the reluctance of many northerners to accept the Civil War as a war to end slavery—as Lincoln had made it with his Emancipation Proclamation—rather than to save the Union.

Panic of 1873

The Panic of 1873 was an economic depression that began in September 1873, as railroad companies running on speculative credits failed, creating problems in the national banking, credit, and stock systems (Foner 217). The Panic led to massive economic problems, including unemployment, strikes, and agrarian unrest (Foner 218). The Panic contributed to the end of Reconstruction in a number of ways. As labor unions and yeoman farmers stirred discontent, upper-and-middle class Northerners, who believed in economic stability and respectability, turned away from their former belief in the unifying power of free labor. They instead turned towards criticism of economic support for these "lower" classes. Thus, groups like the Liberal Republicans, who advocated an end to active government intervention for the blacks and poor whites in the South, were strengthened (Foner 219). Also, the focus of the Republican Party, which had formerly been on guaranteeing the political and civil rights of freedmen in the South, turned towards economic policy. As economic issues came to hold top priority, the costly activist intervention in the South came to be seen as a liability (Lecture 4/21). Finally, since the Republicans were the party in power at the time of the Panic, Democrats made large gains in the Congressional elections of 1874, enabling them to begin to dismantle Reconstruction (which Democrats had never truly supported) (Foner 221). Thus, by undermining the resolve of the Northern public and the Republicans to continue Reconstruction, and by bringing to power anti-Reconstruction Democrats, the Panic of 1873 hastened Reconstruction's end.

13th Amendment

The Senate approved the 13th Amendment in 1864, which abolished slavery throughout the Union. The House approved this in January 1865. Although, it settled the question of slavery, freedom became an ambiguity. Many Republicans believed that the 13th Amendment guaranteed that blacks would be granted citizenship that was protected by the federal government. It also opened the question of whether freedmen were ready to be citizens and competitors in the marketplace, or whether the federal government had to take special action, since they might not be accustomed to their new statuses. Radicals believed that there should be a division of planter lands among freedmen. In March 1865, the Freedman's Bureau was created, which showed how Republicans belived that the federal government needed to take responsibility for emancipated slaves. (Foner 30).

Slave society

The Slave society developed overnight as a result of the Cotton Explosion. With the invention of the cotton gin, the South became a land of cotton and was entirely dependant on slave labor. By 1850 about 4 million slaves (with a real value of $75Bn) made up America's greatest financial asset in the US economy, and was larger than manufacturing and railroads combined. The Southern Slave society: a system in which ideas about race were infused into slavery, slaves were non-citizens with no social rights and were viewed as non-human, slavery was a permanent and inherited status, American slavery became an expansionary capitalist system, only slave society where slaves naturally reproduced themselves, and the only slave society to exist within a Republic where half of the population did not depend on slaves and developed a moral world view that was not even tolerant of owning slaves.

Slave-Power Conspiracy

The Slave-Power conspiracy, also known as the 'Slaveocracy', was the idea that slaveholders held the power to control the national government. Many Northern politicians feared the expansion of slavery not because of the mistreatment of slaves, but rather because of the political threat slavery posed to American Republicanism. In Lincoln's famous "House Divided" speech of June 1858, he charged senator Stephen A. Douglas, Presidents James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce, and Chief Justice Roger Taney as conspirators in a plot to nationalize slavery, as proven by the Dred Scott decision in 1857. Republicans viewed Bleeding Kansas and the assault on Sentor Sumner as evidence that the Slave Power was violent, aggressive, and expansive. The only solution to countering the Slave-Power conspiracy was a new commitment to free labor, and a deliberate effort to stop any more territorial expansion of slavery.

Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan

The Ten Percent Plan was a preliminary reconstruction plan drafted and presented to congress in December 1863. The plan would provide amnesty to many of the people previously involved with the Confederacy outside of high ranking government officials, army officers, and the wealthiest of planters. The proposal involved citizens taking an oath of allegiance to the union. A state would be readmitted to the union after ten percent of its voters took the oath. The plan was presented as a way to ease the process of reconstruction and perhaps shorten the war. However, the plan would never go into action due to the assassination of Lincoln. This plan also set a precedent of a lenient process of reconstruction favored by Lincoln but opposed by the Radical Republicans. This proposal also caused Lincoln to fall away from his claims that the States never left the Union, because to reenter, one must first leave. The Ten percent Plan never went into action, but would become ammunition for Andrew Johnson who also favored a quick approach to Reconstruction. The plan also left the legacy of not punishing Southerners following the war. Sources: Foner(21); Johnson (272-8).

Virginia Campaign 1864

The Virginia Campaign of 1864 was the final deciding campaign during the Civil War. General Grant's dominant purpose in this campaign was to destroy Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Throughout the campaign, Lee actually inflicted more casualties on the Union armies, but, unlike Grant, Lee had no replacements. The Virginia Campaign included the inconclusive Wilderness Campaign, the Battle of Spotsylvania, and the 9-month siege of Petersburg. Despite heavy casualties, Grant pursued the Lee's weary army and eventually forced them to surrender in April of 1865. The Virginia Campaign of 1864 was the final blow to the Army of Northern Virginia signaled the collapse of the Confederacy. It was the manifestation of Grant's plan to attack Lee's army and not worry about capturing Richmond.

Wade-Davis Bill

The Wade-Davis Bill was a Congressional bill sponsored by Radical Republicans Benjamin Wade and Henry Winter Davis, which was passed in July 1864 but never signed into law by President Lincoln. The bill proposed new standards with which former Confederate states could re-enter the Union: once a majority of state voters swore allegiance to the Constitution, elections for delegates to a state constitutional convention could be held, with franchise limited to those who had sworn the "Ironclad Oath" of having never aided the Confederacy, and the state constitution needed to guarantee civil equality (equality before the law) for blacks (Foner 28). The Wade-Davis Bill signaled that Radicals in Congress viewed Reconstruction differently from Lincoln, who used wartime reconstruction as a method towards undermining white southerners' loyalty to the Confederacy and bringing the war to a quick end. The Radicals believed that Reconstruction provided the opportunity for far-reaching change in the South, in which the civil equality of freedmen, the ensured loyalty of the South in the future, and the power of the federal government could all be furthered. Hence, as these views of Reconstruction came into conflict, and as Lincoln refused to commit himself to any rigid, inflexible plan of reconstruction, he pocket-vetoed the bill, which provoked an angry response from Wade and Davis in their Wade-Davis Manifesto (Foner 29). The Radicals thus declared their commitment not only to a process of reconstruction that ensured southern loyalty and guaranteed the equality of blacks before the law—and that prioritized these commitments over a speedy and painless reconstruction process—but to the right of Congress to oversee reconstruction, especially in the face of a hostile president.

"Southern Lady"

The definition of the Southern lady changed within the first few years of the Civil War. In the antebellum era, the upper-class Southern lady was conditioned to be submissive to and completely dependent on her husband. Slaves took care of the chores around the manor and the women were mostly unneeded. However, as the Civil War swept away ¾ of the men in the South, women had to rely on themselves to provide for their families. Battling rampant inflation, women struggled to purchase enough food. Also, controlling the slaves became a major problem as they became unruly as the Union closed in. Women were forced to discipline slaves themselves (which they were often afraid to do) or hire overseers. Southern women served as nurses in hospitals to support the Confederate cause. They also formed political, book, and sewing clubs to occupy their attention. These clubs and female interactions, in some ways, became a foundation for the women's suffrage movement. The changing definition of the Southern lady is important because it marks a dramatic evolution from a peculiar Victorian dependency to a more independent cognizant position. The old Southern lady ideal also reflects the antebellum organic conservative ideology.

Election of 1868

The election took place in the aftermath of Andrew Johnson's impeachment and acquittal. Ulysses S. Grant was the Republican candidate, while New York Governor Horatio Seymour was the Democrat candidate. Grant was seen as being conservative, partly because he did not have strong ideological convictions. The Democrats were forced back to opposition to Reconstruction. Seymour's running mate, Francis P. Blair, made a disastrous speaking campaign, marked by blatantly racist language. Although some Democratic congressmen were baffled by Blair's behavior, Blair set the tone of the Democratic campaign. This was the last Presidential race that would center on white supremacy. Many Northern conservatives who had previously supported Johnson ended up siding with Grant, and Northern capitalists supported the Republican party as well. In the South, on the other hand, the Democrats campaigned using the idea that a victory by Seymour would result in an undoing of Reconstruction. Violence now was directly a part of electoral politics. The KKK spread into almost every southern state, and began a "reign of terror" against both Republican white and black leaders. A number of Republicans were assassinated during the campaign. Grant won by a surprisingly small margin. While Grant's election guaranteed that Reconstruction would continue, it was also evident that the Republican leadership was changing. Thaddeus Stevens was gone, and Radicalism was coming to an end. While in the Civil War error, Republicans had campaigned change, during this election, they were campaigning for order and stability. (Foner 145-147)

Southern Redemption

The idea of Southern Redemption is born out of the movements that began when many former Confederates started regaining enfranchisement. This resulted in the growth of power in the Democratic Party in the south. One initial example would be the election of Democratic Governors in Tennessee and Virginia in 1869. This redemption is characterized by the reshift in power toward the Democratic Party in the south. Whether by election or the influence of violence, the group of Democrats that became known as the Redeemers successfully shifted control of southern governments back to the Democrats. The biggest thing to come out of the new Democratic Rule in the south was that during the Republican rule many Freedmen had roles in the government and held elected office. With the redemption of the Democrats, these elected positions were retaken by white men, and in many areas, African-Americans would not hold office in the South for many years. Source: Foner (228-9, 163, 180-2, 227-49)

Fort Sumter

The last remaining Union army outpost in the Confederate States of America before the outbreak of the Civil War, Fort Sumter was located on a man-made island in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. When the fort's commander, Major Robert Anderson, refused to surrender his garrison, Confederate shore batteries under the command of General P.G.T. Beauregard began bombarding Sumter on April 12, 1861, an action which started the Civil War. Fort Sumter marked the first combat action of the Civil War and prompted President Abraham Lincoln to request 75,000 volunteer soldiers. By ordering the expansion of the Union military, Lincoln provoked the secession of Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina, the last states to join the Confederacy. Lincoln's response to Fort Sumter exemplified the attitude toward secession he espoused for the duration of the Civil War: the southern states had not left the union because of the unconstitutionality of secession, and they were under the control of illegitimate governments. Hence, the President called for additional troops to "put down the domestic insurrection" in the South, which the assault on Fort Sumter had instigated.

Southern Yeoman Farmers

The poor, dependant white class in the South. Most of the Southern white workers were non-slaveholding, land-owning farmers, and anywhere from 300,000 to 400,000 of them were starving. Many yeoman farmers were herders of livestock, and caught on to the "Alabama/Mississippi" fever; the land was cheap and farmers only needed a few slaves to make huge profits. Many farmers were searching for economic improvement and moved out of the slave states and into the free states and territories to the northwest. There were two groups of non-slaveholding white farmers; those who worked close to and cooperated with large plantations (they depended on the plantation to transport and market their products, usually cotton), and a smaller group who lived outside the plantation districts (they preferred to raise crops, preferably corn). In 1850, roughly 40% of the South's white farmers owned no real estate at all. Many southern yeoman farmers believed in, and fought for, white supremacy. Struggle for independence became "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight". Many of the confederates who deserted the army were the poorest class of non-slaveholders whose labor was indispensable to the support of their families.

Sharecropping

The practice of Sharecropping grew out of the need for a labor force to produce the former slave crops, such as cotton, in order to build the southern economy. It was initially criticized as an inefficient system with the family doing the sharing the crop with a land owner determining its own pace of work. The system placed the tenant family in partial ownership of the land and crop they produced. These working families received a portion of the profits of their crop. The system did not achieve the autonomy wished for by Freedmen, but did provide independence from the daily oversight of landowners. The problem with sharecropping was that it was never fully developed and this opened opportunity for reform in favor of the landowners. Reform, such as the Landlord and Tenant Act of 1877 in North Carolina, gave advantage to the landowners. This act placed ownership of a crop solely in the hands of the planter until necessary rents were paid. The practice of Sharecropping gave power over freedmen once again to White men. This practice would last generations and prevent economic independence of many freedmen. Sources: Foner (176-78, 250-1)

Antietam

The single bloodiest day in American history, the battle of Antietam was fought on September 17, 1862 at Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland between a Confederate army commanded by General Robert E. Lee and a Union army commanded by General George McClellan. Despite being outnumbered two-to-one, Lee's army inflicted heavy casualties on McClellan's (while suffering equally devastating losses themselves) before being forced to retreat back into Virginia. Lee's decision to take the war into the Union represented the Southern strategies to defeat the Union by either gaining foreign recognition and assistance following a decisive victory over Union armies on Northern soil, or by causing enough fear among Northern citizens due to the Confederate military presence to force the Lincoln administration to sue for peace. Yet Lee's campaign failed due to the superiority of the amount of soldiers McClellan could deploy; the respective strengths of both armies at Antietam exemplified the troop deficits the Confederates had to deal with at almost every battle during the Civil War. Finally, McClellan's reluctance to pursue a weakened Confederate army after Antietam revealed his incompetence as a field commander.[3] <#_ftn3>[3] <#_ftnref3> Sources: James M. McPherson, /Battle Cry of Freedom/, pp. 538-545.

"State Suicide"

The theory espoused by Radical Republicans, and fundamental to the notion of Radical Reconstruction, that the former Confederate States destroyed their statehood by the act of secession. Therefore, they could be divided into districts, placed under military rule, forced to undergo territorial reorganization, and generally grovel to Congress to be readmitted into the Union. This stood in sharp contrast to Johnson's notion that the States had never successfully left the Union. The ramifications of this belief were that a much greater degree of Federal authority and imposition could be justified if the States had in fact surrendered their status as States; this dispute reared its head in questions like that of the constitutionality of the Freedmen's Bureau, which Johnson vetoed before being overruled by Congress. Also, if the States had surrendered their statehood, Radical Reconstruction's treatment of them more as a laboratory for experimentation than as a part of the Union was both more legally justified and politically palpable. (Taken more or less verbatim from Mary Ellem; I couldn't find this anywhere, and I figured her definition was the one she wanted, anyway.)

Black Codes

The white South was convinced that in order for the production of plantation staples to continue, there had to be coerced labor. Since slavery was abolished, planters turned to the state in order to establish labor discipline. This resulted initially in the Black Codes. The Black Codes were enacted starting at the end of 1865, during the presidency of Andrew Johnson. They were enacted as a series of state laws in order to satisfy the demands of planters for a new labor system enforced by the states. The Black Codes would undermine Presidential Reconstruction. On the one hand, the Black Codes defined the freedmen's new rights and responsibilities, which included rights to own property, marry, make contracts, sue, testify in court in cases involving other blacks. However, the main purpose of these codes was to maintain a black work force and limit blacks' economic options. These codes authorized the state to enforce labor agreements and plantation discipline, punish blacks who refused to contract, and also prevents whites from competing among themselves for black workers. Mississippi and South Carolina were the first states to enact these codes in 1865, and theirs were among the most severe. The North was opposed to these laws, which caused other Southern states to modify their language, although often not the purpose of the Codes. Blacks were opposed to all of these measures.

The shrinking South

Theory that convinced many slaveholders of the need for continued, aggressive expansion of the institution. It surmised that as slavery came into contact with free labor in the border states, it would be pushed out and made increasingly unprofitable due to competition from wage laborers as well as the increased risk of runaways. This would drive down slave prices as owners sought to cut their losses; they would sell their slaves further South as local slavery dwindled, eventually giving way to a free society. This effect would continue to erode the South's "borders" until the Deep South became a concentration of vast slave populations and few whites, prone to a violent uprising. The notion that slavery if left alone would shrink was important in convincing Southern politicians to aggressively push the agenda of slavery in the territories, leading to expansionary wars like the Mexican conflict and precipitating a conflict with the free Northern states over the future of those lands.

Andrew Johnson's veto of the Civil Rights Act of 1866

This Civil Rights Act of 1868 was constitutionally the first attempt at giving meaning to the 13th Amendment. It attempted to define the essence of freedom and the rights of American citizenship in legislative terms. It reflected a profound change in the relationship between federal and state governments that was taking place, and it also showed how Radical ideas were becoming the Republican mainstream; it expanded federal authority. It was meant to benefit freedmen. It placed primary responsibility in the hands of state governments, but it also authorized the federal government to step in when discriminatory state laws were enacted. It was an attempt to protect the civil rights of blacks. Also, the bill was mainly directed against public, rather than private, acts of injustice. By February 1866, Republicans were united behind this bill. However, President Johnson surprisingly vetoed the bill (along with the Freedmen's Bureau Bill), thinking that giving blacks full citizenship somehow discriminated against whites. This veto caused a split between Johnson and the Republicans. Congress passed a major piece of legislation over the President's veto, for the first time in American history. (Foner 110-113).

Election of 1860

This election to replace the retiring incumbent Buchanan pitted a fractured Democratic Party against Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans in their second-ever presidential campaign. Southern Democrats were unwilling to support the party front-runner Stephen Douglas due to his opposition to the fraudulent, proslavery Lecompton Constitution in Kansas as well as his Freeport Doctrine. They demanded and were refused a federal guarantee of protection for slavery in all the territories as per Dred Scott, and so they formed a separate convention in Richmond which nominated John C. Breckinridge, who would carry every slaveholding state except for Tennessee, Kentucky, and Maryland - which went to John Bell's Constitutional Union party - and Missouri, the only full state won by Douglas. The outcome was hardly in doubt after the collapse of the Democrats: Lincoln won 40% of the national vote and won in every free state except New Jersey, which he split with Douglas. Douglas won 30% of the popular vote but took just two states. The Southern Democrats' all-or-nothing attitude towards the Democratic platform ensured the fracture of that party and the victory of Lincoln - a victory the Southerners were prepared to treat as the cause for total separation from the Union. The results of this election formed the direct basis for the outbreak of civil war.

The Election of 1856

This election was largely a three-way contest in which the Pennsylvanian Democrat James Buchanan defeated the Republican John C. Fremont and the Know-Nothing candidate Millard Fillmore. Fillmore was supported by remnants of the Whig party as well, but his Know-Nothing supporters split badly over the issue of slavery in the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which controversially opened territories north of the Missouri Compromise Line to slavery by popular vote of the settlers. This fatal collapse of the centrist Know-Nothings, together with the unexpectedly strong showing of the new, openly anti-slavery Republican Party in the northern states, indicated that it was no longer politically possible to vacillate on the issue of slavery. Buchanan's winning platform stressed antinativism, states' rights, and popular sovereignty against the alleged bigotry of the Know-Nothings and the radical abolitionism of the Republicans. This election had the effect of deepening the sectional rift between North and South, with the Southerners complaining of Republican propaganda emboldening slaves and Northerners accusing slaveholding interests of conspiring to take over the future of the western territories.

Robert E. Lee

Thought that his experiences during the Mexican-American war were where Lee first gained his aggressive style. Lee's greatest victories were the Seven Days Battles, the Second Battle of Bull Run, the Battle of Fredericksburg, and the Battle of Chancellorsville, but both of his campaigns to invade the North ended in failure. Barely escaping defeat at the Battle of Antietam in 1862, Lee was forced to return to the South. In early July 1863, Lee was decisively defeated at the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. However, due to ineffectual pursuit by the commander of Union forces, Major General George Meade, Lee escaped again to Virginia. In the spring of 1864, the new Union commander, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, began a series of campaigns to wear down Lee's army. In the Overland Campaign of 1864 and the Siege of Petersburg in 1864-1865, Lee inflicted heavy casualties on Grant's larger army, but was unable to replace his own losses. In early April 1865, Lee's depleted forces were turned from their entrenchments near the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, and he began a strategic retreat. Lee's subsequent surrender at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865 represented the loss of only one of the remaining Confederate field armies, but it was a psychological blow from which the South could not recover. So What: Lee above any figure in the CSA commanded the respect of the people in the South. Until he was vanquished, the South always felt as if they had a chance to succeed, because Lee's reputation and the belief of both his men and his nation in his greatness and ability. Because of Lee's reputation, Grant realized the importance of Lee's surrender to the end of the war itself, and therefore placed a priority on pursuing Lee until Lee did indeed surrender. Moreover, though his surrender at Appomattox was not officially the close of the CW, it spelled the end in the eyes of most of its citizens.

Total War

Total war is a term used to describe a war that draws the entire population into the conflict. The Civil War can be considered a total war, not only because of the tremendous loss of life and terrible carnage on the battlefield, but because of the war's intense impact on the lives of non-combatants. The impact of the war on the home front was felt most intensely in the South for two reasons. First, the majority of the battles fought took place on Southern soil, leading to a more immediate effect on the life of Southern civilians. Secondly, the social hierarchy of the South was overturned by the war. One example of this upheaval came in the changing roles of middle and upper class women. Many women were forced to abandon the value they ascribed to living life as a lady because the absence of their husbands required them to act as household or plantation managers. (Faust) The war also fundamentally altered the economic and racial landscape of the South through the emancipation of slaves, a process that was ongoing throughout the war. The Civil War was total in that it had a radical effect on the social, economic, and political life of the nation.

Union Leagues

Unionist political organizations of which chapters formed in the South after the Civil War, among upcountry whites and—especially in 1867-1868—among southern blacks (Foner 125). A number of the chapters had integrated membership that included black officers, and undertook a number of activities important to freedmen, including the election of black and other Republicans to state positions, building schools and churches, and protecting the economic and political rights of freedmen against local violations (Foner 126). The Union Leagues were important in further developing the political mobilization of the black population in the South that occurred at the onset of Radical Reconstruction. The leagues helped foster a sense of political consciousness and identity among the freedmen and freemen of the South, and provided settings in which black political leaders could rise. The Union Leagues thus served not only as instruments of the Republican Party and its interests in the South, but as tools with which blacks could guarantee their own rights and help achieve their vision of civic, political, and economic fairness.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Was a bill introduced in 1854 by Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas and passed by Congress the same year. The bill was a concession to Southern Senators and stipulated that the slave status of the Nebraska territory, along with the new Kansas territory that laid adjacent to Missouri (created by this bill) would be decided by popular sovereignty. This bill was widely unpopular in the north because it nullified the MO compromise of 1820 that provided a fire wall in the 39th parallel to stop the expansion of slavery into the North. This bill led to the weakening of the Democratic Party in the north who lost 70 percent of the seats up for election in the House in 1855 and every pro-Nebraska candidate in the Senate. The bill also weakened the Whig party, built the Republican Party by giving it a more attractive and substantial platform, gave logic to the free soil argument and divided the Know Nothing Party in a way that strengthened the Republican Party in the North. Not only did the bill inflame sectional tensions, it was also directly responsible for the blood letting of bleeding Kansas.

"Mexican Cession"

Was the large tract of land ceded to the United States following the Mexican War in 1848 for $15 million through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Following the cession of the land the debate over slavery and its expansion increased. There were four proposals for what should be done with the land: 1. Wilmot proviso to not allow slavery in any new territories 2. State sovereignty to allow people to take property anywhere 3. Popular sovereignty which would allow settlers to choose 4. Geographic line like the compromise of 1820. The debate over the what should happen to the land and the resulting compromise of 1850 increased sectional tension and aided the belief that there was a southern slave expansion conspiracy in the north, a fear that the Republican party would tap into.

Carpetbagger

a derogatory term used to describe Northerners who moved to the South after the war during Reconstruction (approx. between 1865 and 1877). Although, they never comprised more than two percent of the total voting population in the South, they held a major share of Reconstruction political offices, and along with freedmen and scalawags (Southern Republicans), they controlled much of the political power in the Reconstruction South. Carpetbaggers were significant because they helped shape Reconstruction in the South, and showed that Reconstruction needed the joint efforts of both blacks white Republicans. (Foner 129)

George B. McClellan

a major general during the American Civil War. He organized the famous Army of the Potomac and served briefly (November 1861 to March 1862) as the general-in-chief of the Union Army. Early in the war, McClellan played an important role in raising a well-trained and organized army for the Union. However, although McClellan was meticulous in his planning and preparations, these attributes may have hampered his ability to challenge aggressive opponents in a fast-moving battlefield environment. He chronically overestimated the strength of enemy units and was reluctant to apply principles of mass, frequently leaving large portions of his army unengaged at decisive points. Failed in the Pennisula Campaign; and Lincoln famously said of him: "If General McClellan does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a time." Ran for President as a Democrat in 1864 and was, in the end, soundly defeated by Lincoln. So what: A figure of failure and lack of action in the early part of the civil war. A source of contention for Lincoln, and also a rallying point for Lincoln and his cabinet at a time when the cabinet tended to question Lincoln on many issues. Serves as a foil to the style of Grant. In 64, Lincoln's overwhelming support from the military in the face of opposition from McClellan despite McClellan's popularity with his troops served as a referendum for the continuation of the war.

bloody shirt

a political tactic used primarily by Republicans in Northern elections following the end of the Civil War (approximately 1866 and on). Republicans linked the Democrats and Southerners with treason, rebellion, and the violence of the Civil War in order to win popular support in the north. This tactic, which emphasized the sectional animosities of the Civil War, was significant because it revealed the strong sectional tensions that still existed after the war and because it downplayed the issues and efforts of Reconstructions, foreshadowing its failure (Gienapp 344).

William Lloyd Garrison (December 13, 1805 - May 24, 1879)

a prominent American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer during the antebellum period until after the civil war. He is best known as the editor of the radical abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator, which gained prominence as a beacon for the abolitionist movement from 1831 until he stopped publishing it in 1865. He was also one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, which garnered about 250,000 members by 1838. He promoted "immediate emancipation" of slaves in the United States. Garrison was also a prominent voice for the women's suffrage movement and a notable critic of the prevailing conservative religious orthodoxy that supported slavery and opposed suffrage for women. His approach to emancipation stressed nonviolence and passive resistance, and he attracted a vocal following.

The Underground Railroad

a secret network of houses and families organized to help fugitive slaves find safety in the Northern states. Composed of freed slaves and abolitionist whites, the Underground Railroad accounted for a rate of escapees that was lower than the concurrent birthrate of the slave population, but the rumors and propaganda which surrounded it made for a powerful effect on the minds of slaveholders, who were only further convinced of the need for stringent controls to prevent escapes and the application of federal pressure on state and local authorities in the North to counteract noncooperation and even obstruction of slavecatching efforts (i.e. the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850).

Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858

a series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate, and the incumbent Stephen A. Douglas, a Democrat, for an Illinois seat in the United States Senate. At the time, U.S. Senators were elected by state legislatures; thus Lincoln and Douglas were campaigning for their respective parties to win control of the Illinois legislature. The debates previewed the issues that Lincoln would face in the 1860 presidential election. The main issue discussed in all seven debates was slavery, which was of monumental importance to the nation as a whole, giving the debates national significance and causing intense newspaper coverage. Lincoln and Douglas each exaggerated the extremism of the other. Lincoln was more moderate than the abolitionists, and Douglas defeated a southern attempt to use vote fraud to have Kansas admitted as a slave state. The main theme of the debates was slavery, especially the issue of slavery's expansion into the territories. It was Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act that repealed the Missouri Compromise's ban on slavery in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and replaced it with the doctrine of popular sovereignty, which meant that the people of a territory could decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. Lincoln said that popular sovereignty would nationalize and perpetuate slavery.[6] Douglas argued that both Whigs and Democrats believed in popular sovereignty and that the Compromise of 1850 was an example of this.[7] Lincoln said that the national policy was to limit the spread of slavery, and mentioned (both at Jonesboro[8] and later in his Cooper Union Address) the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which banned slavery from a large part of the modern-day Midwest, as an example of this policy.[9] The Compromise of 1850 allowed the territories of Utah and New Mexico to decide for or against slavery, but it also allowed the admission of California as a free state, reduced the size of the slave state of Texas by adjusting the boundary, and ended the slave trade (but not slavery itself) in the District of Columbia. In return, the South got a stronger fugitive slave law than the version mentioned in the Constitution.[10] Whereas Douglas said that the Compromise of 1850 replaced the Missouri Compromise ban on slavery in the Louisiana Purchase territory north and west of the state of Missouri, Lincoln said that this was false,[11] and that Popular Sovereignty and the Dred Scott decision were a departure from the policies of the past that would nationalize slavery.[12][13] After losing the election for Senator in Illinois, Lincoln edited the texts of all the debates and had them published in a book, which led eventually to Lincoln's nomination for President of the United States by the 1860 Republican National Convention in Chicago.

Charles Sumner (January 6, 1811 - March 11, 1874)

an American politician and statesman from Massachusetts. An academic lawyer and a powerful orator, Sumner was the leader of the antislavery forces in Massachusetts and a leader of the Radical Republicans in the United States Senate during the American Civil War and Reconstruction One of the most learned statesmen of the era, he specialized in foreign affairs, working closely with Abraham Lincoln. He devoted his enormous energies to the destruction of what he considered the Slave Power, that is the scheme of slave owners to take control of the federal government and block the progress of liberty. His severe beating in 1856 by South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks on the floor of the United States Senate (Sumner-Brooks affair) helped escalate the tensions that led to war. After years of therapy Sumner returned to the Senate to help lead the Civil War. Sumner was a leading proponent of abolishing slavery to weaken the Confederacy. Although he kept on good terms with Abraham Lincoln, he was a leader of the hard-line Radical Republicans. As a Radical Republican leader in the Senate during Reconstruction, 1865-1871, Sumner fought hard to provide equal civil and voting rights for the freedmen (on the grounds that "consent of the governed" was a basic principle of American republicanism), and to block ex-Confederates from power so they would not reverse the victory in the Civil War. Sumner, teaming with House leader Thaddeus Stevens, defeated Andrew Johnson, and imposed Radical views on the South. In 1871, however, he broke with President Ulysses Grant; Grant's Senate supporters then took away Sumner's power base, his committee chairmanship. Sumner, concluding that Grant's corruption and the success of Reconstruction policies called for new national leadership, supported the Liberal Republicans candidate Horace Greeley in 1872 and lost his power inside the Republican party. Scholars consider Sumner and Stevens to be among America's foremost champions of black rights before and after the Civil War; one historian says he was "perhaps the least racist man in America in his day."

Election of 1876

highly controversial and violent election in which Republican Reutherford B. Hayes was elected over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. While Tilden won the popular vote, Hayes and the Republicans, tarnished by the scandals of the Grant era, carried the electoral vote 185 to 184, causing major uproar. An Electoral Commission was created to resolve conflict over disputed votes, but the Commission, composed of 5 Republican Congressmen, 5 Democratic Congressmen, and 5 Supreme Court Justices (3 of whom were Republican) ruled that Hayes had won, sparking even more conflict. The conflict was eventually resolved by the Compromise of 1877, but this election and the near Democratic victory marked a major decline in Republican political dominance and that Reconstruction was drawing to a close. (Foner 238-243, Blight Lecture 4/23/09)

Dred Scott Decision

passed down in 1857 and said that although Dred Scott had lived for years on free soil with his master he was still a slave. Chief Justice Robert Taney said that 1. Dred Scott had no standing in the court system because he was black and blacks had no rights because they were not citizens 2. Dred Scott was still a slave because slaves were property and temporary residence in free territory did not bestow freedom and 3. Congress could not deprive citizens of their property, the Missouri compromise had never been constitutional. This decision inflamed the north because the decision was very pro-south and said that slave owners could bring their slaves wherever they went threatening free labor and the small farms of the Midwest. This decision also forced the Republican Party, based on stopping slavery's expansion, support an unconstitutional platform and also made northerners fear a slave expansion conspiracy all the more- especially since the logical conclusion of a second Dred Scott case would be that states did not have the right to forbid slavery at all which would then make all states slave states- a theme Lincoln used in a number of speeches. Huge sectional issue, South was incredibly please with decision and north hated and feared it.

Fugitive Slave law

the first fugitive slave law was passed in 1793 and a stricter version was passed in 1850 as part of the compromise of 1850. The 1850 version was intended to anesthetize the northern complacency with the Underground Railroad and foil other northern obstructionism. The new fugitive slave law did the exact opposite of what southerners hoped it would in the north because incensed northerners began to in some cases physically fight slave hunters and did all they could to prevent the law from being carried out. This new law also became the inspiration for Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin that helped awaken the northern conscience to the horrors of slavery.

Compromise of 1877

this informal compromise between Democrats and Republicans resolved the highly disputed election of 1876. Its main provisions included allowing Hayes to become president, provided he remove the remaining troops that were stationed in the South and grant cabinet positions to key Democrats. This compromise ended the filibuster by the Democrats, and returned home rule to the South. Many believe it marks the definitive end of Reconstruction, as Hayes abandoned freedmen in the South and allowed southern "Redeemer" governments to replace Republican governments and resulted in definitive Democratic domination in the South. (Foner 244-245, Blight Lecture 4/23/09)

William H. Seward

was a Governor of New York, United States Senator and the United States Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. An outspoken opponent of the spread of slavery in the years leading up to the American Civil War, he was a dominant figure in the Republican party in its formative years, and was widely regarded as the leading contender for the party's presidential nomination in 1860 - yet his very outspokenness may have cost him the nomination. Despite his loss, he became a loyal member of Lincoln's wartime cabinet, and played a role in preventing foreign intervention early in the war. So What: Initially the favorite for the nomination of 1860, Seward was deemed by some to be too radical in his beliefs and ideas on slavery. Seward hailed from western new york, an area that was a hotbed for radical and antislavery thoughts (burned over district). Eventually, Seward became the most instrumental advisor to Lincoln, helping him with his first inaugural throughout the entirety of lincoln's life.

Compromise of 1850

was a compromise passed in 1850 that had five parts: 1. California was admitted to the Union as a free state 2. The New Mexico and Utah territories were to choose their slave status through a referendum 3. Texas lost the New Mexico territory, but received $10 million as compensation, done so another slave state could be brought into the union to balance potential new free states in north 4. The slave trade would end in the district of Columbia 5. A new, stricter fugitive slave law was passed. This compromise quieted sectional animosity temporarily and was hailed as the compromise that would save the Union. Beside the new fugitive slave law that generated great amounts of anger in the North, the compromise of 1850 did quiet sectional tension for much of the coming decade, but during that same time the two regions of the country steadily drifted apart.

Know Nothing movement

was a nativist American political movement of the 1840s and 1850s, which originated in New York in 1843 as the American Republican Party and spread to other states as the Native American Party and was remaned the American Party in 1855. The origin of the "Know Nothing" term was in the semi-secret organization of the party. When a member was asked about its activities, he was supposed to reply, "I know nothing."[4] It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to U.S. values and controlled by the Pope in Rome. Mainly active from 1854 to 1856, it strove to curb immigration and naturalization, though its efforts were met with little success. There were few prominent leaders, and the largely middle-class and entirely Protestant membership fragmented over the issue of slavery. Most ended up joining the Republican Party by the time of the 1860 presidential election.[1][2]

Ulysses S. Grant

was general-in-chief of the Union Army from 1864 to 1865 during the American Civil War and the 18th President of the United States from 1869 to 1877. Appointed brigadier general of volunteers in 1861 by President Abraham Lincoln, Grant claimed the first major Union victories of the war in 1862, capturing Forts Henry and Donelson in Tennessee. He was surprised by a Confederate attack at the Battle of Shiloh, and although he emerged victorious, the severe casualties on both sides prompted a public outcry and he was temporarily removed from army command. Grant's 1863 victory at Vicksburg, following a long campaign with many initial setbacks, and his rescue of the besieged Union army at Chattanooga, established his reputation as Lincoln's most aggressive and successful general. Named lieutenant general and general-in-chief of the Army in 1864, Grant implemented a coordinated strategy of simultaneous attacks aimed at destroying the South's armies and its economy's ability to sustain its forces. In 1865, after mounting a successful war of attrition against his Confederate opponents, he accepted the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House. Popular due to the Union victory in the Civil War, Grant was elected President of the United States as a Republican in 1868 and was re-elected in 1872, the first President to serve for two full terms since Andrew Jackson forty years before. As President, Grant led Reconstruction and built a powerful patronage-based Republican Party in the South, straining relations between the North and former Confederates. His administration was marred by scandal, sometimes the product of nepotism, and the neologism Grantism was coined to describe political corruption. So What: Did more than any general, with the possible exception of Sherman, to turn the tide of the war effort. Redefined the style of attack employed by the Union, and helped to change the morale of the entire army. Politically, was supportive of Reconstruction, although not nearly to the extent of the radicals. His administration and Republicanism in general became concerned with economic matters in 1873 with the coming of a huge economic depression. This event, along with scadals involving railroads, defined the Grant administration while violence in the South that was destroying the efforts of R-N was not properly dealt with.

Whig Party

was one of the two major political parties in America formed in opposition to Andrew Jackson in the 1830s and it remained a strong presence until the early 1850s. Dominated by the presence and then later by the ghost of Henry Clay, its political principles were based upon support for industry, infrastructure improvement, and a national bank. While at first a national party, it could not withstand the sectional pressures of the slavery question and eventually dissolved over it and over the issues of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Many northern Whigs went on to help form or participate in the Republican Party in 1856.

Wilmot Provison

ws an amendment to a bill before the U.S. House of Representatives in 1846 during the Mexican War, which was intended to appropriate $2 million to enable President Polk to negotiate a territorial settlement with Mexico put. David Wilmot introduced the proviso to the bill stipulating that none of the territory acquired in the Mexican War should be open to slavery. The amended bill was passed in the House, but the Senate adjourned without voting on it. Wilmot continued trying to pass the anti-slavery proviso in the upcoming sessions but it continued to be voted down by the senate until the senate drafted its own appropriations bill which excluded the proviso. The Wilmot Proviso created great bitterness between North and South and helped crystallize the conflict over the extension of slavery, which was critical to the institution of slavery, which was fighting aginst the notion of the "shrinking south." In the election of 1848 the terms of the Wilmot Proviso, a definite challenge to proslavery groups, were ignored by the Whig and Democratic parties but were adopted by the Free-Soil party. Later the Republican party also favored excluding slavery from new territories.