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WAR

WAR In 1858, Lincoln won the Republican Nomination for the Illinois Senate seat. He wanted the seat of his long time rival, Senator Stephen Douglas. In Lincoln’s first speech for his Senate campaign Lincoln said, “I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free.” Lincoln warned his opponents that the spread of slavery must be stopped or else it would become “lawful in all the states; old as well as new- north as well as south.” In July of 1958, Lincoln challenged Senator Douglas to a series of seven three-hour, public debates. Thousands of people showed up to watch the Little Giant (Douglas) vs. Long Abe. Douglas fought for white supremacy. He believed the country could endure half free and half slave. Douglas said whites made this country therefore they should run it. Lincoln wanted equality. During one debate Lincoln said: “There is no reason in the world why the Negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man.” In the end, Douglas won the Senate election by a hair. However, Lincoln did not give up. His debates with Douglas had made him famous across Illinois. Lincoln kept debating and got a lot of Republican support. Lincoln got so much support that the Republicans felt he could win the presidential election. So, they tried to get him nominated. The Lincoln-Douglas debates were incredibly crucial to Lincoln’s future career. It was this series of debates that made Lincoln well known throughout the country. In fact, Lincoln probably would not have won the Presidential Election in 1860 if he hadn’t debated with Douglas. Douglas was far better known than Lincoln was throughout the country and in Illinois. At the Lincoln-Douglas debates people from miles around would come to watch the two men speak in the remote towns of Illinois. Reporters from around the nation came and jotted down what the two men said. What was said at the debates could be read in the newspapers of major cities the very next day. It was Lincoln-Douglas debates that first gave Lincoln nation wide publicity. Lincoln probably would not have ended up in the White House if it had not been for these debates. PRESIDENCY PRE-CIVIL-WAR At the Illinois Republican Convention in May 1860 Lincoln was chosen as the Republican’s favorite Presidential Candidate. One week later at the National Republican Convention, Lincoln was nominated on the third ballot. Lincoln was running against two Democrats Stephen Douglas of Illinois, and John C. Breckenridge, a southern Democrat from Kentucky. On Election Day—November 6, 1860—Lincoln won the election with 1,866,000 votes. He carried every Northern State. Southerners hated this “black Republican” and his name did not appear on any southern ballots. Douglas got 1,377,000 votes and Breckenridge received 850,000. If the Democratic Party had not split Lincoln would not have been elected. Douglas and Breckenridge’s votes combined were more than the total number of votes for Lincoln. So, if Breckenridge hadn’t run, almost all Democratic votes would have gone to Douglas. I also believe, that if Douglas were elected, a civil war would not have broken out. Douglas believed the nation could endure half-free half slave. He did not feel strongly about slavery. Unlike Lincoln, Douglas did not care if slavery spread through America. If it weren’t for Lincoln slavery could have spread into new states and territories. It was Lincoln’s boldness against slavery that created nation wide freedom in America. As soon as Lincoln was elected some southern states threatened to secede from the Union. The South hated Lincoln. An Atlanta newspaper said, “Let the consequences be what they may… the south will never submit such humiliation and degradation as the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln.” And so, sure enough, in December, the slave state South Carolina seceded from the Union. During the next three months before Lincoln’s inauguration, seven more slave states seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America with their capital in Richmond, Virginia. In February, Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi became the president of the Confederacy. On the 4th of March 1861, Lincoln was sworn into office. In his inaugural address Lincoln told the people he would not tamper with slavery in the states where it already existed. “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” Little did the people know what Lincoln was going to do. He later said in his address “In your [the American people] hands, my dissatisfied countrymen, and not mine is the momentous issue of civil war.” Lincoln went on to say he would do everything he could to “preserve, protect, and defend” the Union. Then came 1854 and the momentous Kansas-Nebraska Act , brainchild of Lincoln’s archrival Stephen A. Douglas. At once a storm of free-soil protest broke across the North, and scores of political leaders branded the Kansas-Nebraska Act as part of a sinister Southern plot to extend slavery and augment Southern political power in Washington. The train of ominous events from Kansas-Nebraska to Dred Scott shook Lincoln to his foundations. Lincoln waded into the middle of the antiextension fight. By 1858, Lincoln, like a lot of other Republicans, began to see a grim proslavery conspiracy at work in the United States. The next step in the conspiracy would be to nationalize slavery: the Taney Court, Lincoln feared, would hand down another decision, one declaring that states could not prohibit slavery. For Lincoln and his Republican colleagues, it was imperative that the conspiracy be blocked in its initial stage - the expansion of slavery into the West. Douglas fighting for his political life in free-soil Illinois, lashed back at Lincoln with unadulterated racebaiting. Forced to take a stand against Douglas ruin him with his allegations, Lincoln conceded that he was not for Negro political or social equality. Exasperated with Douglas and white Negrophobia in general, Lincoln begged American whites “to discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man---this race and that race and the other race as being inferior. Lincoln lost the 1857 Senate contest to Douglas. Yet for the benefit of the Southerners, he repeated that he and his party would nor hurt slavery in the South. But Southerns refused to believe anything Lincoln said. At the outset of the war, Lincoln strove to be consistent with all that he and his party had said about slavery: his purpose in the struggle was strictly to save the Union. There were other reasons for Lincoln’s hands-off policy about slavery. He was also waging a bipartisan war effort, with Northern Democrats and Republicans alike enlisting in his armies to save the Union. But the pressures and problems of civil war caused Lincoln to change his mind and abandon his hands policy about slavery and hurl an executive fist at slavery in the rebel states. Sumner, Lincoln’s personal friend was especially persistent in advocating the freeing of the slaves. Sumner, as a major Lincoln adviser on foreign affairs, also linked emancipation to foreign policy. Black and White abolitionists belabored that point too. The pressure on Lincoln to strike at slavery was unrelenting. On that score slaves themselves were contributing to the pressures on Lincoln to emancipate them. Lincoln however stubbornly rejected a presidential move against slavery. Nevertheless he was sympathetic to the entire rage of arguments Sumner and his associates rehearsed for him. In March 1862, he proposed a plan to Congress he thought might work: a gradual, compensated emancipation program to commence in the loyal border states. At the same time, the federal government would sponsor a colonization program, which was to be entirely voluntary. If his gradual state-guided plan were adopted, Lincoln contended that a presidential decree---federally enforced emancipation---would never be necessary. The plan failed. Most of the border men turned him down. He had given this a lot of grave and painful thought, he said, and had concluded that a presidential declaration of emancipation was the alternative, that is was ‘a military necessity absolutely essential to the preservation of the Union.’ On July 22, 1862, Lincoln summoned his cabinet members and read them a draft of a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Contrary to what many historians have said Lincoln’s projected Proclamation went further than anything Congress had done. But Seward and other cabinet secretaries dissuaded him from issuing his Proclamation in July. Lincoln finally agreed to wait, but he was not happy about it: the way George B. McClellan and his other generals had been fighting in the Eastern theater, Lincoln had no idea that he would have a victory. One of the great ironies of the war was that McClellan presented Lincoln with the triumph he needed. As in turned out, the preliminary Proclamation ignited racial discontent in much of the lower North, escpecially the Midwest. Republican analysists, Lincoln included, conceded that the preliminary Proclamation was a major factor in the Republican losses. In the final Proclamation Lincoln temporarily exempted occupied Tennessee and certain occupied places in Louisiana and Virginia. Out the Proclamation went to an anxious and dissident nation. Lincoln’s Proclamation was the most revolutionary measure ever to come from an American president up to that time. Moreover, word of the Proclamation hummed across the slave grapevine in the Confederacy; and as Union armies grew near, more slaves than ever ran away. The Proclamation also opened the army to the black volunteers, and the Northern free Negros and Southern ex-slaves now enlisted as Union soldiers. Unhappily, the blacks fought in segregated units and until late in the war received less pay than whites. After the Proclamation Lincoln had to confront the problem of race adjustment, of what to do with all the blacks liberated in the South. As a consequence, Lincoln had just about concluded that whites and liberated blacks must somehow learn to live together in this country. Even so, emancipation remained the most explosive and unpopular act of Lincoln’ s presidency. When he won the election of 1864, Lincoln interpreted it as a popular mandate for him and his emancipation policy. As it happened , the Senate in May 1864 had already passed an emancipation amendment - the present 13th amendment - but the House failed to approve it. Lincoln pronounced the amendment “ a great moral victory” and “a King’s cure” for the evils of slavery. Lincoln concede that he had not controlled the events of the war, but that the events of the war controlled him instead, that God controlled him. In the past paragraph of his address, Lincoln said he would bind the nation’s wounds “with malice toward none” and “charity for all”. The cotton gin invented in 1793 by Eli Whitney revolutionized the production of cotton. It now became profitable to raise short staple cotton with the soil and climate favoring this and soon cotton production stretched from Georgia and South Carolina westwards till Texas. With the growth of British textile industry, cotton growers were assured of a market. Efficient cotton growing could take place in both large and small plantations and slave labor was an important part of cotton production. The move to diversified agriculture retreated to the background as cotton growing seemed more profitable. Plantations flourished, as did slave labor. The anti-bellum south witnessed the growth of an agrarian economy with the rise of king cotton and a revival of slavery. Cotton was ‘king’ since production of cotton doubled every 10-12 years from 1812 onwards, 50% of American exports were of cotton and the seaboard started a profitable slave trade with cotton planters. Economic prosperity resulted in political domination by planters. The economy of the south was very different than that of the other sections though it was closer to the west as it was agricultural. There were three main features of the southern economy-the cash crops of cotton, tobacco and sugar, the European market for its products and the plantation system that required slaves as a labor force. It was the slave system that distinguished the south from the other sections of the west and the north. The dominant class of society in the south was the planter class. Other important people in the south were bankers and merchants, all of who were closely linked to the planter class and on whom they were dependent. The industry of the manufacture of textiles was a very important industry in the south but as is obvious, it was also closely connected to the planter class. The planter class was not a uniform class with subdivisions based on the size of the plantation- big, medium and small plantations. Even within the white population there were divisions. The banker class dominated the economic sphere of southern life but the plantation owners had more social status and so we often see an alliance between these two classes. It is firmly believed that the south had the maximum degree of culture and unity in terms of Southernism. It was the strongest section in the United States as in the sectional solidarity and the awareness of its entity. It had a cultural unity despite the diversity, a coherence that led many historians to name this period as the anti-bellum period while referring to the uniqueness of the south. Even the climate has been attributed as a feature of this southern uniqueness. The hot weather in the predominantly agrarian setup is seen as another facet in the southern makeup. There was the existence of the plantation style cultivation based on the slave labor produced tobacco, cotton and sugar which was mainly for export. The southern planters had trade through merchants with England. Urbanization had not really occurred on the scale of the northern section. There was a rural character with few towns and cities consisting of a diffused population of 13 persons per square mile including the slaves. The majority of the people were Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. Southernism The Southernism referred to by many historians consisted of certain features like the rural character, the plantation system, slavery and the social organization and the very different products of this region. The rural character of the southern section is attributed to the people’s love for their land. There was also a devotion to the English culture and a conscious effort to recreate English society in the lifestyles of the affluent of the south. The society was mainly conservative, liking the status quo with no changes in their style of living. The society was quite orderly with a clearly defined class organization though not a rigid one. Social mobility was possible but not as easily as in the north or the west as there was minimum class competition. Often the climate has been given to explain the comfortable life enjoyed by the southern people. Everyone had an easy life without much effort, as they were free from the necessity of conquering the environment, as the soil was very fertile and easy to till. The southern people had a lot of spare time to enjoy life. Though this would be an exaggeration, it is true that there was a lot of leisure time especially among the higher classes. There was a belief or a passion for pleasure more than toil with a firm conviction that it was more important to have pleasure than to have profit. The second feature often put forward to explain the uniqueness of the south is the plantation system with salves as the labor force. U.B. Phillips believes the slave system to be the main reason for the Southernism talked about. The south was the only area where slavery was institutionalized and a vast number of slaves of different color and race were found here. The people of the south were determined to keep the south as the white man’s south. Slavery was more than a labor force-it was a device of white supremacy. Slavery was an institution supported by white people and the unifying factor for all southerners be it planter or poor white was their superiority over the blacks. From 1820s onwards, slavery was being criticized within the United States. It was condemned by the northerners who were supported by the Latin Americans, British and other Europeans. Slavery had been abolished all over the world and the only place where it remained was in the south section of the United States. The people of the south were aware of the criticism directed at their institution and knew that they defied world opinion. They were under tremendous pressure and suffered from guilt over the issue. They were probably uncomfortable with their separate identity. The dilemma deepened when the majority of the south did not want slavery and its criticism while for the planters, abolition was impossible. They realized the isolation due to this issue but could not solve the problem. The social organization of the southern society was very different from other areas of the United States. There were 8 important groups of free population in the south. Slaves were considered as property and the differences within their group were not taken into account. The eight main groups of society were- 1-Major Planters – They were the apex of society and were the aristocrats of the south. They were called cotton or tobacco nabobs. They lived in huge palatial mansions using slaves for their plantations. They numbered not more than 8,000 in the 1860’s. This class was the ideal of the south and every white man aspired to be part of this elite. 2-Medium planters. 3-Small planters-Together the medium and small planters were 18,000 people. The planters got the best education in the south. In a typical planter family, the elder brother became the planter while the younger brothers generally tried for Senate representation. They were trained to represent their class. The planter’s class was dependant on the merchants and the bankers for their life of luxury. They were the trendsetters and led public opinion. This class considered itself superior to the rest but the class distinctions were not rigid. If someone moved into a new area, he could hope to become a major planter slowly. This class formed a leadership top southern white society. They were the focus of all moral and social aspirations of southern society. They were the ruling class and the system continued to exist because of their superior feeling. The small farmers were not exploited and his ambitions did not interfere with the major and medium planters so the system continued. The major and medium planters had the lion’s share of income but since the small farmers were quite well off there were no economic grievances against slavery. In fact, there were more slaves owned together by the medium and small planters together than the major planters as they aspired to be major planters. This class liked the English culture gleaned mainly from English literature and imitated their way of life. Most white people were of the pure Anglo-Saxon race and racial discriminations became a way of life with them. Slavery was a part of their cultural and social life and it was very difficult to break this. 4-Manufacturers and bankers-Industry in the south existed basically in a formative stage. Few businessmen invested money outside a plantation. Planters with excess cash preferred to invest in slaves. Factories for manufacture of textiles, iron, flourmills were set up in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. Brokers and merchants were very important people as they marketed the cash crops of the south. This class was mainly situated in New Orleans, Charleston, Savanna, etc. They became bankers or planters. They aspired to become planters, as it was a socially dominant class. Though they played an important role in southern economy and society, they were not recognized. After the 1850’s, they were a neglected class. 5-Professional Classes-It comprised of lawyers, editors and doctors. They were linked to the planter class as their well being depended on the planter’s prosperity. They generally agreed with the views of the planters and could be from a planter family. 6-Highlanders-They lived in the southern mountains in the Appalachian range in Mississippi. They were a group of whiter people whose cultural pattern differed greatly from southern society. They had a crude subsistence culture. As they lived outside the main community, they were considered primitive and did not own any slaves. They believed in the old ways, ideas and values. They had an almost emotional devotion to nationalism and did not believe in State’s rights. They were the only people in the south who defied sectionalism and during the Civil War they resisted secession. They mainly lived in the areas covered by West Virginia and Tennessee. 7-Poor Whites-They were a degraded class and after 1850, numbered almost half a million. They were different from poor farmers and ranked just above slaves. They were characterized by laziness, ignorance and lack of ambition. They were often called “uncomplimentary” people, “crackers”, “white trash” and occupied infertile land usually swamps and barren tracks. They did not have a balanced diet and engaged in hunting, fishing and growing vegetables at home. Their origin is obscure and one theory suggest that they were the less competitive frontier population who were pushed back because they were less enterprising. They were often afflicted by diseases like hookworm, malaria, etc. and their situation only improved in the twentieth century with proper food and health care. 8-Free Negroes-They were a displaced group as they were not slaves legally but race-wise they were not free either. They often had to prove that they were free. It is estimated that there were almost 250,000 free Negroes in 1860. They mainly lived in Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri and North Carolina. Very few ever attained wealth and prominence and the majority lived in poverty. Many avenues were closed to them by law and they were viewed by the Whites as a danger to the institution of slavery. Citizenship was denied to them and they were forbidden from attending legislative assemblies without permission from and supervision by Whites. They could not hold property in White areas. The crops grown in the south were generally cash crops like tobacco, rice, sugar and cotton. Agriculture was diversified in Virginia and central Kentucky. Most farmers tried to produce food grains for their family and their slaves so 80% of all peas and beans came from the south. Other things like apples, peaches, peanuts, sweet potatoes, hops, mules etc. despite aspiring to self-sufficiency, corn and salted pork for the slaves had to be imported from the northwest. Tobacco was grown in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, northern and western Tennessee, Missouri and Mississippi valley. It was grown in the tideland of the regions and required 6 months for their production. Rice required 9 months and a constant supply of water for its growth and was generally grown in South Carolina, Georgia and other coastal regions. The time needed for the growth of sugar was 9 months and had the largest area under production. Cotton was grown from North Carolina to Texas and was the principle product of the south with the exception of the coastal area. It was produced in Alabama, Georgia, northwest Mississippi, southwest Tennessee, southern Arkansas, Louisiana and eastern Texas. The farming methods employed which resulted in the exhaustion of soil as no crop rotation was practiced. Some improvements were suggested by Edmund ruffle in “Farmer’s Register” like fertilization, rotation and deep ploughing. The north, infuriated by the passing of the Kansas-Nebraska bill and the fugitive slave bill passed many personal liberty laws, which made the capture of fugitive slaves very difficult. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was a book written by Harriet Beecher Stowe and first published in 1852. It greatly increased the resurgence of anti-slavery feeling, with its emotional force and dramatic effectiveness. It was an extremely influential book and fuelled the abolitionists’ fervor and broadened their public support. The formation of the Republican Party by the combination of Whigs and democrats and the free soilers all of whom were anti slavery occured during this time. Their support base was from the western farmers and eastern businessmen. Charles Sumner and William Seward were the main leaders of the party. In the election of 1856, the democrats nominated James Buchanan who supported popular sovereignty, the republicans nominated john Fremont and the Whigs nominated Fillmore. Though Buchanan won the election, the success of the republican candidate in the north showed that without the northern democrats, the republicans were poised to defeat the democrats in 1860. The Buchanan showed a decided southern bias in its work especially when the tariffs were lowered in 1857, the veto of the Homestead Act and pro-southern policies. Buchanan’s ineffectiveness in administration was further aggravated by the Dredscott's decision of the Supreme Court. Dredscott was a slave who belonged to an army surgeon who was from Missouri, a slave state. He was taken by his master to the free states of Illinois and Wisconsin and then brought back to Missouri. Later he sued that since he had resided in areas where slavery was prohibited by law he was a free man. His case was picked up by abolitionists who helped him. Six judges of the Supreme Court agreed that since he was living in Missouri, he was a slave. Chief justice Taney further went on to say that since Dredscott was not a citizen of the country he did not have the right to bring the case to court. He also said that the congress could not abolish slavery from any sates since that interfered with the right of private property of a citizen, thus making the Missouri compromise unconstitutional and making slavery legal all over the country. A convention was held in Kansas by the proslavery faction, which drafted a constitution legalizing slavery. Buchanan supported this constitution called the Lecompton constitution. The new governor of Kansas, Walker established free and fair election, which resulted in the freesoilers gaining control of the government, but Buchanan dismissed walker. Now the Democratic Party split with the northern wings led by Douglas and the southern wing still loyal to the administration. In the reelection for Douglas for the senate ship he was opposed by Lincoln. There were a series of debates and though Douglas was reelected, Lincoln became a national figure. In the presidential election of 1860, he was elected and his election precipitated the secession of the southern states. On 20 december1861, South Carolina unanimously voted for secession from the union. Less than a month later, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas joined South Carolina in secession, though minority groups opposed it. The confederacy was formed with Jefferson Davis as the president. The union, under president Buchanan offered a compromise to reverse their secession. When this failed and Lincoln took over on 6 March, 1861he had to deal with this problem. Lincoln sent reinforcements to fort Sumter in South Carolina. When South Carolina attacked this force, war was declared in April 1861 Bibliography:

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