Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power

Home > Other > Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power > Page 50
Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power Page 50

by Richard J. Carwardine


  The 1864 election is the subject of David E. Long, The Jewel of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln’s Re-election and the End of Slavery (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1994). Although he probably understates the extent of treason amongst wartime dissidents, Frank L. Klement has done more than anyone to shed light on the antiwar Democrats and the 1864 climax of the peace movement: see, especially, The Copperheads in the Middle West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), and The Limits of Dissent: Clement L. Vallandigham and the Civil War (1970; rept. New York: Fordham University Press, 1998).

  7. The Potency of Death

  William Hanchett, in The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), provides a coolheaded examination of Lincoln’s assassination and its subsequent interpretation and reinterpretation. Contemporary reactions to Lincoln’s death are considered in Thomas Reed Turner, Beware the People Weeping: Public Opinion and the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), and David B. Chesebrough, “No Sorrow like Our Sorrow”: Northern Protestant Ministers and the Assassination of Lincoln (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1994). The evolving place of Lincoln and of the Civil War in the nation’s psyche is the focus, respectively, of Merrill D. Peterson, Lincoln in American Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), and David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).

  Reference

  Finally, two indispensable reference works deserve special mention: Earl Schenck Miers, ed., Lincoln Day by Day: A Chronology, 1809–1865, 3 vols. (Washington, DC: Lincoln Sesquicentennial Commission, 1960), and Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982).

  CHRONOLOGY OF LINCOLN’S LIFE

  1809 February 12 Born near Hodgenville, Hardin County, Kentucky, son of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln

  1811 Spring Family moves to a farm on Knob Creek, ten miles north

  1816 December Family moves to Spencer County, Indiana

  1818 October 5 Mother dies of “the milk sickness”

  1819 December 2 Father marries Sarah Bush Johnston of Elizabethtown, Kentucky

  1828 January 20 Older sister, Sarah, dies in childbirth

  Spring Takes a flatboat to New Orleans

  November Andrew Jackson elected president (1829–37)

  1830 March Family moves to Macon County, Illinois

  Summer Delivers his first political speech

  1831 April–July Second flatboat trip to New Orleans

  July Settles in New Salem

  1832 April–July Serves in Black Hawk War and is elected captain

  August 6 Defeated in election for Illinois state legislature

  1833 January Buys a general store with William F. Berry

  May 7 Appointed postmaster (and serves for three years)

  1834 Supplements income by work as assistant surveyor

  Begins to study law

  August 4 Elected to Illinois House of Representatives

  December 1 Begins first term in state legislature

  1835 March Sells personal possessions to pay off debt

  1836 August 1 Reelected to state legislature (second term)

  September 9 Receives law license

  November Martin Van Buren elected president (1837–41)

  1837 March 1 Formally enrolled as a lawyer and permitted to charge legal fees

  March 3 With Dan Stone enters protest in the legislature against slavery

  April 15 Moves to Springfield and becomes John T. Stuart’s junior law partner

  1838 August 6 Reelected to the state legislature (third term)

  1840 August 3 Reelected to the state legislature (fourth and final term)

  November William Henry Harrison elected president (1841; term completed by John Tyler 1841–45)

  1841 January 1 Breaks off engagement with Mary Todd

  April Dissolves partnership with Stuart and becomes Stephen T. Logan’s junior partner

  1842 September 22 Challenged to a duel by James Shields

  November 4 Marries Mary Todd

  1843 August 1 Birth of their first son, Robert Todd Lincoln

  1844 November James K. Polk elected president (1845–49)

  December Forms legal partnership with William H. Herndon, dissolving his connection with Logan

  1846 March 10 Birth of Edward Baker Lincoln (Eddie), second son

  August 3 Elected to U.S. House of Representatives from the Seventh Congressional District of Illinois

  1847 December 3 Takes his seat in Congress

  1848 November Zachary Taylor elected president (1849–50; term completed by Millard Fillmore, 1850–53)

  1849 March 4 Completes his congressional term

  1850 February 1 Eddie dies from pulmonary tuberculosis

  December 21 Birth of William Wallace Lincoln (Willie), third son

  1852 November Franklin Pierce elected president (1853–57)

  1853 April 4 Birth of Thomas Lincoln (Tad), fourth son

  1854 May 30 Kansas-Nebraska Bill signed into law

  October 16 Peoria speech

  November 7 Elected to Illinois state legislature

  November 27 Gives notice that he will resign to seek U.S. Senate seat

  1855 February 8 Narrowly defeated for senator in the state legislature

  1856 February 22 Joins those organizing the Republican party in Illinois

  May 29 Speaks at Republican state convention and is nominated a presidential elector

  June 19 Runner-up in Republican national convention ballot for vice presidential nominee

  November James Buchanan elected president (1857–61)

  1857 March Dred Scott decision

  1858 June 16 Nominated for U.S. Senate by the Republican state convention; House Divided speech

  August 21– Debates publicly with Douglas

  October 15

  November 2 Republicans’ plurality in state election fails to prevent Douglas’s reelection to Senate

  1859 October 16 John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry

  1860 February 27 Address at Cooper Union, New York

  May 9–10 State Republican nominating convention at Decatur instructs delegates to support Lincoln at national convention in Chicago

  May 18 Nominated for president by the Chicago convention

  November 6 Elected president

  December 20 South Carolina passes ordinance of secession

  1861 February 11 Leaves Springfield for Washington

  March 4 Inaugurated as sixteenth president

  April 12 Confederate forces bombard Fort Sumter

  April 15 Issues call for 75,000 volunteers

  April 19 Proclaims a blockade

  April 27 Suspends writ of habeas corpus along the Philadelphia–Washington military line

  July 4 Special message to Congress

  July 21 First battle of Bull Run

  August 6 First Confiscation Act

  September 12 Revokes Frémont’s proclamation

  November 1 Appoints McClellan to command of U.S. army

  1862 February 6 Capture of Fort Henry

  February 16 Capture of Fort Donelson

  February 20 Son Willie dies

  March 6 Special message to Congress on compensated emancipation

  April 6–7 Battle of Shiloh

  April 16 Signs into law the District of Columbia Emancipation Bill

  April 25 Union capture of New Orleans

  May 19 Revokes Hunter’s proclamation

  May 31–June 1 Battle of Seven Pines

  June 25–July 1 Seven Days’ Battles

  July 12 Meets border-state representatives

  July 17 Second Confiscation Act

  July 22 Submits draft Emancipation Proclamation to cabinet

  July 23 Names Halleck general-in-chief

  August Institutes militia draft under Militia Act of July 17

  August 29–30 Second battle of Bull Run

/>   September 17 Battle of Antietam

  September 22 Issues preliminary Emancipation Proclamation

  September 24 Issues proclamation suspending writ of habeas corpus throughout the Union

  October–November Union-Republican losses in state elections

  November 5 Removes McClellan and appoints Burnside as commander of the Army of the Potomac

  December 13 Battle of Fredericksburg

  1863 January 1 Issues final Emancipation Proclamation

  January 25 Replaces Burnside with Hooker

  May 1–4 Battle of Chancellorsville

  May 6 Arrest of Vallandigham

  May 18 Siege of Vicksburg begins

  June 28 Replaces Hooker with Meade

  July 1–3 Battle of Gettysburg

  July 4 Fall of Vicksburg

  July 13–16 Draft riots in New York City

  September 19–20 Battle of Chickamauga

  October–November Union-Republican gains in state elections

  November 19 Gettysburg Address

  November 23–25 Battle of Chattanooga

  December 8 Issues Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction

  1864 February 20 Pomeroy Circular published, promoting Chase for president

  March 10 Assigns Grant to command of all Union armies

  May–June Grant’s Virginia offensive

  June 8 Renominated for presidency by National Union convention

  June 19 Siege of Petersburg begins

  June 30 Accepts Chase’s resignation from cabinet

  July 4 Pocket-vetoes Wade-Davis Bill

  July 18 Appoints Greeley to peace mission

  August 5 Battle of Mobile Bay

  August 29 Democratic convention nominates McClellan for president

  September 2 Atlanta falls to Sherman

  September 17 Frémont withdraws from presidential contest

  September 23 Asks Blair to resign

  November 8 Reelected president

  November 16 Sherman starts March to the Sea

  December 15–16 Confederate defeat in battle of Nashville

  December 22 Sherman occupies Savannah

  1865 January 31 Congress passes Thirteenth Amendment

  February 3 Attends Hampton Roads Peace Conference

  March 4 Delivers Second Inaugural address

  April 4 Visits Richmond, two days after the Confederate evacuation

  April 9 Lee surrenders at Appomattox Court House

  April 11 Delivers his last speech

  April 14 Shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre

  April 15 Dies at 7:22 a.m.

  May 4 Buried in Springfield

  SELECT GLOSSARY OF TERMS

  abolitionists: The militant reformers who, from the mid-1820s, sought an immediate start to the nationwide removal of slavery. Commonly driven by a perfectionist Protestant religious impulse and a belief that slavery was a personal sin, these absolutists split during the later 1830s: some followed William Lloyd Garrison into “Christian anarchism” and the rejection of political activity; others aimed to use the political system—by organizing a third force, the Liberty party—to bring pressure to bear on the major parties. Abolitionists represented only a small portion of the larger antislavery constituency in the United States. The majority, hostile to the radicals, looked to prevent slavery’s spread into the federal territories and to quarantine it within the slave states, where it would gradually wither away; many advocated the transfer of the free black population to colonies abroad.

  American party: see Know-Nothing party

  antimission Baptists: Doctrinally strict (“hard-shell”) immersionists, found mostly in the rural Midwest and South, who “out-Calvined” the sixteenth-century theologian John Calvin. Building on Calvin’s understanding of a sovereign God’s foreordination of events, they fashioned a rigid predestinarian theology, and condemned evangelism and all other missionary activity, including organized benevolence, which they particularly associated with New England religious reformers.

  Arminianism: The anti-Calvinist theological doctrine emphasizing human ability and Christ’s general atonement for all (taking its name from the sixteenth-century Dutch reformer Jacobus Arminius). This system of beliefs provided the ideological engine for the most powerful of all the mid-nineteenth-century American denominations, the Methodists.

  Baptists: see evangelical Protestants

  border states: The northernmost tier of slave states (Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware), linked economically and culturally to both North and South. Of these, only Virginia seceded when war broke out, and it would suffer its own fracture, with the secession of West Virginia to the Union.

  Campbellites: see Disciples of Christ

  Compromise of 1850: The political settlement—proposed by Henry Clay and eventually achieved through the shrewd congressional management of Stephen Douglas—which resolved the growing crisis occasioned by disputes over states’ rights and the future of slavery in the lands wrested from Mexico. Northern antislavery and free-soil advocates secured California’s entry to the Union as a free state, and the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia. Southerners won a strict new Fugitive Slave Law, and federal settlement of the Texas debt. At the heart of the settlement—more an armistice than a true compromise—stood the organization of New Mexico and Utah territories on the principle of “popular sovereignty”: the issue of slavery would be left for the settlers themselves to decide (subject to the verdict of the courts). Douglas’s application of this principle to the Nebraska Territory in 1854 brought to an end the relative political calm secured by his efforts four years earlier.

  Confiscation Acts: The First Confiscation Act, of August 6, 1861, allowed the federal army to free any slaves being used by the Confederacy for military purposes. The Second Confiscation Act, of July 17, 1862, meeting demands for a harsher (“hard war”) policy, empowered the military authorities to confiscate the property, including slaves, owned by those deemed active rebels.

  Copperheads: The antiwar element of the wartime Democratic party, so named by their opponents after the poisonous snake that strikes without warning. Their heartland was the Midwest, where they were particularly strong in the southern counties of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.

  Democratic party: The political coalition fostered in the 1820s by Martin Van Buren on the bisectional foundations of Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican party. From 1828—when Andrew Jackson won the presidency—until 1860, the party dominated national politics, offering a mix of states’ rights philosophy, laissez-faire doctrine, and territorial expansion. It suffered devastating losses in the North following the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Sectionally unbalanced, it split in 1860 over the issue of the federal government’s power over, and responsibilities toward, slavery. During wartime a minority offered robust support to the Lincoln administration, while a “legitimist” majority contended electorally against the Union-Republican party, and an antiwar element labored under the charge of treason for pursuing peace on what appeared to be southern terms.

  Disciples of Christ: Also known as the Campbellites (after Alexander Campbell and his father, Thomas), the movement was a fusion in 1832 of mostly midwestern and southern church separatists and immersionists—so-called Christians and Disciples—who insisted on the primacy of Scripture and the obligation of individuals to interpret the Bible for themselves. The movement numbered 170,000 members by mid-century.

  evangelical Protestants: Evangelicals stressed the individual’s personal need for God’s grace in conversion (“new birth”) and recognized the Bible as the sole authority for the rule of life. They formed the largest subculture in the United States during the Civil War era, the main denominational families being Methodists (who numbered 1,738,000 members nationwide by 1860), missionary Baptists (1,025,000 members), and Presbyterians (426,000 members). Membership numbers understate the churches’ cultural presence, since for each member there were commonly two o
r three “adherents”: namely those who attended but had made no formal profession of faith.

  free-soil doctrine: The creed deriving from the view that the Founding Fathers had never intended slavery to spread beyond the limits of 1787, and that the U.S. Constitution gave the federal government the power and responsibility to keep the territories free from contamination by slave labor. For some the doctrine was a means of preserving the territories exclusively for white labor; for others it was an essential means of bringing about an antislavery republic.

  Free-Soil party: A coalition of antislavery forces—abolitionists, “conscience” Whigs, and antiadministration Democrats—who, following the defeat of the Wilmot Proviso (see below), sought to keep slave labor out of the territories acquired in the war with Mexico (1846–48). The party ran a presidential ticket in the elections of 1848 and 1852 (“free soil, free speech, free labor and free men”); its members provided much of the energy that went into creating the Republican party during 1854 and 1855.

  Fugitive Slave Law: A part of the political compromise of 1850, this stringent congressional act provided slaveholders in pursuit of runaways with federal guarantees and mechanisms that effectively removed from free blacks the protections of the Bill of Rights (including jury trials). Several northern states passed “personal liberty laws” to frustrate the act’s operation.

  habeas corpus: The common-law writ, a protection of civil liberties, which directs that a detainee must be brought before a judge for a hearing (habeas corpus: “you should have the body”). The U.S. Constitution, under Article 1, Section 9, stipulates that the privilege can be set aside only in cases of invasion or rebellion, but it does not say who has the right to suspend the writ.

  Kansas-Nebraska Act: Stephen A. Douglas’s controversial measure, which passed on May 30, 1854, but only after a bitter congressional struggle. The act repealed the Missouri Compromise and invoked “popular sovereignty” as the principle for allowing the settlers of these territories (mostly north of the line of latitude 36�30¢) to decide whether or not to sanction slavery.

 

‹ Prev