by The New Big Book of U S Presidents (2020) (retail) (epub)
With the Kansas Territory up for grabs, slave owners and free soilers rushed into the area and vied for control. Violence soon broke out, making Kansas a preview of the Civil War. Although “Bleeding Kansas” was peaceful by 1856, the controversy made the Democrats unwilling to renominate Pierce. He returned to New Hampshire, leaving his successor to face increased sectional fury.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act seriously damaged the political party system, one of the last unifying forces in the nation. It destroyed the Whigs and divided the Democrats. It also spurred the creation of two new parties: the anti-slavery Republicans and the anti-immigrant Know-Nothings. Composed of ex-Whigs and Free Soilers, the Republican party opposed slavery in the territories but would not interfere where it already existed in the South.
Born: November 23, 1804
Died: October 8, 1869
Birthplace: Hillsborough, NH
V.P.: William R. King
First Lady: Jane Means Appleton
• All three of his children died during childhood
• First president to memorize his inaugural address
Railroads
The 1850s were a boom time for railroads in America. During the decade, workers laid more than 21,000 miles of track that opened up the western United States. The power and speed of the “Iron Horse” thrilled Americans, and railroads became the country’s first billion-dollar industry.
1853
July 8, 1853
Commodore Matthew C. Perry reaches Japan.
1855
Walt Whitman publishes Leaves of Grass, and Frederick Douglass publishes his autobiography, My Bondage, My Freedom.
March 3, 1855
Congress approves $30,000 to buy Egyptian camels for the American Southwest.
May 1856
South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks physically attacks Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner, inflaming sectional emotions.
JAMES BUCHANAN
Democrat, 1857–1861
Relying on constitutional doctrine and legal theories to solve the slavery problem, James Buchanan presided over a polarized nation. Toward the end of his term, he groped in vain for compromise as the nation started down the final road to civil war.
Born into a well-to-do Pennsylvania family, Buchanan graduated from Dickinson College, where he was a gifted debater. In 1819, after his fiancée died, he entered politics, serving in Congress, as President Polk’s secretary of state, and as President Pierce’s ambassador to Great Britain. During his diplomatic career, he helped write the Ostend Manifesto, a document that urged leaders to acquire Cuba from Spain by negotiation or force. Living in London during the Kansas-Nebraska controversy, he avoided taking sides. Hoping to capitalize on his neutral positioning, the Democrats turned to him as their nominee for president in 1856. In the election that year, Buchanan defeated John C. Fremont, the first candidate of the new Republican party.
Sixty-five at the time of his election to the presidency, Buchanan was a respected elder statesman. Cautious and conservative throughout his public career, Buchanan was ill-equipped to handle the explosive political realities of his time. Two days into his term, the Supreme Court declared slaves property and not citizens. In the same decision, it also ruled that Congress did not have the power to ban slavery in the territories. Endorsed by the president, the Dred Scott decision only heightened sectional tension, as did the continuing troubles in Kansas, which still had both pro-slavery and anti-slavery governments. In October 1859, fanatical abolitionist John Brown’s failed attempt to capture a federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia and start a slave revolt brought tensions to the breaking point. Hoping for compromise, Buchanan took no forceful action during the last frantic months of his presidency. He denied that the South had the right to secede from the Union but believed the federal government was powerless to prevent it.
In March 1861, after seven states had already left the Union, Buchanan retired to his Pennsylvania home, where he died 7 years later.
Born: April 23, 1791
Died: June 1, 1868
Birthplace: Cove Gap, PA
V.P.: John C. Breckinridge
First Lady: None
• The only president never to marry
• Because of the Civil War, Buchanan believed he’d be the last president
The Dred Scott Case
In 1846, the slave Dred Scott filed suit in Missouri for his freedom. He argued that his master had taken him into areas where the Missouri Compromise prohibited slavery, and therefore he should be freed. In 1857, the Supreme Court, which had a majority of southern judges, decided that Scott, despite having lived in the North, remained a slave. The implications of this decision went far beyond Scott’s personal freedom. Northerners were outraged by the possibility that slavery might be permitted in free states, where it had long been banned.
John Brown (1800-1859)
During his years of scrapping out a living as a tanner in Pennsylvania and Ohio, John Brown became an anti-slavery activist. Fired by religious zeal, Brown and his family killed five men in Kansas in 1856. Brown then spent 3 years plotting the capture of Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. Caught and hanged after his failed attempt to seize the armory, Brown became a martyr in the North, but his actions struck terror in the South.
1861
1856
The Western Union Telegraph Company is established.
May 1857
American William Walker fails in his attempt to legalize slavery in Nicaragua and then become the leader of that country.
1858
Frederick Law Olmstead begins designing Central Park in New York City.
April 1860
Pony Express mail service begins.
February 1861
Jefferson Davis is elected president of the Confederate States of America
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Republican, 1861–1865
Abraham Lincoln governed during the greatest crisis in American history. His humanity, eloquence, and determination to save the Union set him apart as one of America’s most extraordinary presidents and the central figure of U.S. history.
The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln had a humble backwoods childhood. Despite having less than a year of formal education, he became an avid reader and a powerful writer. Before becoming a successful lawyer in Illinois, Lincoln worked as a rail splitter, a ferryboat captain, a clerk, a postmaster, and a soldier in the army. As a member of the Whig party until it collapsed in the 1850s, Lincoln served several terms in the Illinois legislature and one term in the U.S. Congress, where he criticized the Mexican War and supported several anti-slavery initiatives. In 1858, he ran as the Republican candidate for one of Illinois’s Senate seats. Although Lincoln lost the election to Stephen Douglas, his performance in the seven well-attended debates earned him national recognition and the 1860 Republican presidential nomination.
In 1860, Lincoln, who was only on the ballot in the North, won the most fateful election in American history with less than 40% of the popular vote. Even before the unusual four-candidate election, southern militants threatened to secede from the Union if Lincoln was elected. In December, with the Republican victory final, South Carolina made good on its threat to secede. By the time Lincoln delivered his inaugural address in March 1861, six other southern states had left the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. On April 12, 1861, Confederate guns fired the first shots of the Civil War at Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.
To subdue the rebellion, Lincoln immediately took several decisive steps without consulting Congress, such as expanding the armed forces and ordering a naval blockade of Confederate ports. With these executive orders, Lincoln showed he was going to be a strong president. Later, because of the emergency situation, he imposed military law on civilians, suppressed newspapers, and seized private property. Lincoln argued that his vast extension of presidential power was temporarily justified beca
use, as president, he was responsible for defending and preserving the Constitution.
From the beginning, Lincoln made it clear that his primary concern in fighting the war was the preservation of the Union, not the abolition of slavery. He gradually and cautiously changed his position, however. Finally, on January 1, 1863, the president—acting in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the armed forces—issued a proclamation freeing all slaves in those states fighting the Union. Though the Emancipation Proclamation did not immediately liberate southern slaves from their masters, it had tremendous symbolic importance. What had started as a war to save the Union became a struggle to free the slaves. To make emancipation official, Lincoln successfully pressed for the passage of the 13th Amendment, which barred slavery from the United States forever.
Because of the revolutionary effects of emancipation, Lincoln knew there was no longer any chance of reconciliation with the South. In addition, by the end of 1863, the war had reached a bloody stalemate, and Lincoln realized that a Union victory required the complete destruction of the Confederacy. Lincoln had problems finding generals who could execute his total-war strategy, however. When the president finally settled in 1864 on Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman, he gave them his full support, although ultimate victory came slowly and produced thousands of Union casualties. In the end, the North’s larger population and superior military-industrial resources—along with timely military victories such as Sherman’s capture of Atlanta, which ensured Lincoln’s re-election in 1864—enabled it to defeat a war-weary South that had never received the foreign aid it needed to win the war.
Overall, Lincoln’s leadership went far beyond just directing the war. Lincoln himself became a symbol of the Union, and his public statements—such as the Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural—gave eloquent purpose to the conflict. In addition to abolishing slavery, the Civil War ended the debate over the relationship of the states to the federal government. On April 14, 1865, only five days after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, Virginia, the president attended a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington. There, John Wilkes Booth, a southern sympathizer, shot him. Lincoln died the following day. Millions of Americans grieved for the man whose words and actions had redefined a nation.
Born: February 12, 1809
Died: April 15, 1865
Birthplace: Hardin County, KY
V.P.: Hannibal Hamlin, Andrew Johnson
First Lady: Mary Todd
• The first president born outside of the original thirteen colonies
• At 6’4”, the tallest president
The Union Army and African Americans
African Americans offered themselves as soldiers for the Union in 1861 but largely had been turned away. They did serve as cooks, laborers, and carpenters, however. African American leaders like Frederick Douglass pressed for military service. Although black soldiers were led by white officers and received lower pay, fighting in the Union army was an important step toward citizenship and acceptance by a white society. By the war’s end, almost 200,000 African Americans had served under the Union flag.
The Battle of Gettysburg
In the summer of 1863, General Robert E. Lee led the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia into southern Pennsylvania. At Gettysburg on a hot and humid July 1, Lee came face-to-face with a Union army led by General George Meade. During three days of battle, Lee ordered costly assaults against the Union line. On July 3, the bloody failure of Pickett’s Charge sealed the Union victory. Coinciding with Grant’s victory at Vicksburg in the West, Gettysburg marked the war’s military turning point. On November 19, Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg to dedicate the battlefield cemetery. Although just 272 words long, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address rededicated the North to the war effort.
Jefferson Davis (1808-1889)
A Mississippi planter, Jefferson Davis was the first and only president of the Confederate States of America. Tall and distinguished, Davis grew up in comfortable circumstances, attended Transylvania University and West Point, fought in the Mexican War before his election to the Senate, and served as secretary of war under Franklin Pierce. Throughout his government career, he supported slavery and states’ rights. As president of the Confederacy, Davis faced enormous problems. The new nation had to create everything, from a constitution to postage stamps. Ironically, some of the actions Davis took to win the war—such as drafting soldiers—undermined the southern war effort. Because of their belief in states’ rights doctrine, many southern governors refused to cooperate with the Confederate government. A month after the Confederacy collapsed, federal troops captured Davis, who had fled the Confederate capital of Richmond disguised as a woman.
1861
July 1861
Matthew Brady begins to photograph Civil War battles. Brady’s dramatic photos shock the northern public.
March 8, 1862
Inconclusive battle occurs between 2 ironclad warships, the U.S.S. Monitor and the C.S.S. Virginia.
August 20, 1862
Newspaper publisher Horace Greeley writes “A Prayer of Twenty Millions,” an editorial recommending emancipation, which influences Lincoln.
June 1, 1863
General Ambrose Burnside orders the suppression of the anti-Lincoln Chicago Tribune.
July 13–16, 1863
The New York draft riots express northern discontent with the war.
October 3, 1863
Lincoln proclaims the last Thursday in November to be Thanksgiving Day.
1864
The phrase “In God We Trust” first appears on U.S. coins.
February 17, 1864
The tiny southern submarine The Hundley sinks a Union ship before sinking herself.
1865
ANDREW JOHNSON
Democrat, 1865–1869
Vice president for only 41 days when Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson faced the enormous task of handling the postwar peace and reuniting the nation. Throughout his term, he fought with Congress over the direction of Reconstruction.
Andrew Johnson grew up in poverty. A self-educated tailor, he made himself into an effective politician and served Tennessee as congressman, governor, and senator. After Lincoln was elected in 1860, Johnson, a Democrat, remained in the Senate when his state seceded. He therefore became a hero in the North, and the Republicans put Johnson on the ticket with Lincoln in 1864 as a gesture of unity.
When Johnson took office in April 1865, the Union was in a state of crisis. Like Lincoln, Johnson supported a lenient Reconstruction policy for the South. Congressional Republicans, in contrast, wanted to punish the seceding states and transform southern society. These “Radical Republicans” passed laws that divided the South into military districts and sent in the army to take command. Radical Republicans were also concerned with the “Black Codes”—a series of measures adopted by southern states to re-establish white dominance by denying the freed slaves such basic rights of citizenship as the right to vote. Because many white Southerners resisted Reconstruction and wanted to restore their old world, the Black Codes were enforced by violent vigilante groups like the Ku Klux Klan. To protect the rights of the former slaves, Congress established the Freedman’s Bureau and passed such laws as the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
From 1866 to 1868, Johnson and Congress continued to clash over Reconstruction policies. As the president steadily lost both public and political support, Congress enacted laws restricting his powers. When Johnson purposefully violated one of these laws, the House of Representatives impeached him. Johnson survived his trial in the Senate by one vote, but his presidency was over. Denied renomination, he retired to Tennessee, which returned him to the Senate in 1875. He died a few months later.
The 14th and 15th Amendments
Ratified by the states on July 28, 1868, the 14th Amendment reaffirmed state and federal citizenship for the freed slaves and over time has come to mean that state as well as federal power is subject to the Bill of Rights. The 15th Amendment,
ratified in 1870, forbade the states from denying any person the vote on grounds of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Born: December 29, 1808
Died: July 31, 1875
Birthplace: Raleigh, NC
V.P.: None
First Lady: Eliza McCardle
• He was 17 before he learned to read
• The only former president elected to the U.S. Senate
Seward’s Folly
In 1867, Secretary of State William Seward arranged for the United States to buy Alaska from Russia. Many Americans thought Seward was crazy to pay more than $7 million for the huge unexplored territory. Only later would the foresight of Seward’s purchase become clear.
1865
1865
Mark Twain publishes The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.
May 16, 1866
Congress authorizes a five-cent coin, nicknamed the nickel.
March 1, 1867
Nebraska is the 37th state admitted to the Union.
October 21, 1868
A devastating earthquake strikes San Francisco, causing more than $3 million in damage.
March 15, 1869
The Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first professional baseball team, is founded.
ULYSSES S. GRANT
Republican, 1869–1877
Ulysses S. Grant brought to the presidency little political experience. The qualities that made him a great Civil War general could not be transferred to the political battlefields of Washington. His presidency was ineffective, and his administration was plagued with scandal.