The Whig Party was a mid-19th century political party in the United States. Alongside the Democratic Party,it was one of two major parties between the late 1830s and the early 1850s and part of the Second Party System. As well as four Whig presidents,other prominent members included Henry Clay,Daniel Webster,Rufus Choate,William Seward,John J. Crittenden,and John Quincy Adams. The Whig base of support was amongst entrepreneurs,professionals,Protestants,and the urban middle class. It had much less backing from poor farmers and unskilled workers.
Alexander Hamilton Stephens was an American politician who served as the first and only vice president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865,and later as the 50th governor of Georgia from 1882 until his death in 1883. A member of the Democratic Party,he represented the state of Georgia in the United States House of Representatives before and after the Civil War.
Clement Laird Vallandigham was an American lawyer and politician who served as the leader of the Copperhead faction of anti-war Democrats during the American Civil War.
The origins of the American Civil War were rooted in the desire of the Southern states to preserve the institution of slavery. Historians in the 21st century overwhelmingly agree on the centrality of slavery in the conflict. They disagree on which aspects were most important,and on the North's reasons for refusing to allow the Southern states to secede. The pseudo-historical Lost Cause ideology denies that slavery was the principal cause of the secession,a view disproven by historical evidence,notably some of the seceding states' own secession documents. After leaving the Union,Mississippi issued a declaration stating,"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world."
Justin Winsor was an American writer,librarian,and historian. His historical work had strong bibliographical and cartographical elements. He was an authority on the early history of North America and was elected the first president of the American Library Association as well as the third president of the American Historical Association.
The Justin Winsor Prize was awarded by the American Historical Association to encourage new authors to pursue the study of history in the Western Hemisphere at a time when the study of European history predominated. The award was established in 1896 and named for Justin Winsor (1831–1897),one of the founders and presidents of the American Historical Association and the long-time Librarian of Harvard University. The award was discontinued in 1938. The American Historical Association's Justin Winsor Prize is not to be confused with the present-day Justin Winsor Prize awarded annually by the Library History Round Table of the American Library Association for the best library history essay.
James Ford Rhodes,was an American industrialist and historian born in Cleveland,Ohio. After earning a fortune in the iron,coal,and steel industries by 1885,he retired from business to devote time to historical research. He wrote a seven-volume history of the United States from 1850,initially published from 1893 to 1906 with an eighth volume added in 1920. Another book,A History of the Civil War,1861–1865 (1918),won the second-ever Pulitzer Prize for History.
John F. Marszalek is an American historian who served as Executive Director and Managing Editor of the Ulysses S. Grant Association and The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant project from 2008 to 2022.
Frank Lawrence Owsley was an American historian who taught at Vanderbilt University for most of his career,where he specialized in Southern history and was a member of the Southern Agrarians. He is notorious for his essay "The Irrepressible Conflict" (1930) in which he lamented the economic loss of slavery for the defeated Confederacy and of the "half savage blacks" that had been freed. He is also known for his study of Confederate diplomacy based on the idea of "King Cotton" and especially his quantitative social history of the middling "plain people" of the Old South.
Don Edward Fehrenbacher was an American historian. He wrote on politics,slavery,and Abraham Lincoln. He won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for History for The Dred Scott Case:Its Significance in American Law and Politics,his book about the Dred Scott Decision. In 1977 David M. Potter's The Impending Crisis,1848-1861,which he edited and completed,won the Pulitzer Prize. In 1997 he won the Lincoln Prize.
Leonard W. Labaree was a distinguished documentary editor,a professor of history at Yale University for more than forty years,a historian of Colonial America,and the founding editor of the multivolume publication of The Papers of Benjamin Franklin.
Benjamin Arthur Quarles was an American historian,administrator,educator,and writer,whose scholarship centered on black American social and political history. Major books by Quarles include The Negro in the Civil War (1953),The Negro in the American Revolution (1961),Lincoln and the Negro (1962),and Black Abolitionists (1969). He demonstrated that blacks were active participants in major conflicts and issues of American history. His books were narrative accounts of critical wartime periods that focused on how blacks interacted with their white allies and emphasized blacks' acting as vital agents of change rather than receiving favors from whites.
In the United States,Southern Unionists were white Southerners living in the Confederate States of America opposed to secession. Many fought for the Union during the Civil War. These people are also referred to as Southern Loyalists,Union Loyalists,or Lincoln's Loyalists. Pro-Confederates in the South derided them as "Tories". During Reconstruction,these terms were replaced by "scalawag",which covered all Southern whites who supported the Republican Party.
Archibald Williams was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Kansas. Williams was a friend and political ally of President Abraham Lincoln.
Stephen Arnold Douglas was an American politician and lawyer from Illinois. A U.S. Senator,he was one of two nominees of the badly split Democratic Party to run for president in the 1860 presidential election,which was won by Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln. Douglas had previously defeated Lincoln in the 1858 United States Senate election in Illinois,known for the pivotal Lincoln–Douglas debates. He was one of the brokers of the Compromise of 1850,which sought to avert a sectional crisis;to further deal with the volatile issue of extending slavery into the territories,Douglas became the foremost advocate of popular sovereignty,which held that each territory should be allowed to determine whether to permit slavery within its borders. This attempt to address the issue was rejected by both pro-slavery and anti-slavery advocates. Douglas was nicknamed the "Little Giant" because he was short in physical stature but a forceful and dominant figure in politics.
This bibliography of Abraham Lincoln is a comprehensive list of written and published works about or by Abraham Lincoln,the 16th president of the United States. In terms of primary sources containing Lincoln's letters and writings,scholars rely on The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln,edited by Roy Basler,and others. It only includes writings by Lincoln,and omits incoming correspondence. In the six decades since Basler completed his work,some new documents written by Lincoln have been discovered. Previously,a project was underway at the Papers of Abraham Lincoln to provide "a freely accessible comprehensive electronic edition of documents written by and to Abraham Lincoln". The Papers of Abraham Lincoln completed Series I of their project The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln in 2000. They electronically launched The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln,Second Edition in 2009,and published a selective print edition of this series. Attempts are still being made to transcribe documents for Series II and Series III.
During the American Civil War,the state of Illinois was a major source of troops for the Union Army,and of military supplies,food,and clothing. Situated near major rivers and railroads,Illinois became a major jumping off place early in the war for Ulysses S. Grant's efforts to seize control of the Mississippi and Tennessee rivers. Statewide,public support for the Union was high despite Copperhead sentiment.
Justin Butterfield served in 1849–1852 as commissioner of the General Land Office of the United States. Appointed to this position in 1849 by the incoming Zachary Taylor administration,he is best known for having faced down,and defeated,another Whig candidate for the same job,Abraham Lincoln. In the General Land Office,he was one of the leading adopters of the railroad land grant system for financing the construction of long-distance railroad infrastructure throughout the United States. He was also one of the foremost Gentile defenders of the rights of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Illinois during the final period of Joseph Smith's leadership at Nauvoo.
Nathan Greene,also known as "Nuddy" Greene,was an American lawyer and legal scholar. He cofounded the International Juridical Association and cowrote The Labor Injunction with his professor and future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. The book criticized the U.S. Supreme Court for creating "government by injunction".
This article documents the political career of Abraham Lincoln from the end of his term in the United States House of Representatives in March 1849 to the beginning of his first term as President of the United States in March 1861.
