Abraham Lincoln was an American lawyer,politician and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the Union through the American Civil War to defend the nation as a constitutional union and succeeded in abolishing slavery,bolstering the federal government,and modernizing the U.S. economy.
The Whig Party was a conservative political party that existed in the United States during the mid-19th century. Alongside the slightly larger Democratic Party,it was one of the two major parties in the United States between the late 1830s and the early 1850s as part of the Second Party System. Four presidents were affiliated with the Whig Party for at least part of their terms. Other prominent members of the Whig Party include Henry Clay,Daniel Webster,Rufus Choate,William Seward,John J. Crittenden,and John Quincy Adams. The Whig base of support was centered among entrepreneurs,professionals,planters,social reformers,devout Protestants,particularly evangelicals,and the emerging 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 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 prior to becoming governor.
Jacksonian democracy was a 19th century political philosophy in the United States that expanded suffrage to most white men over the age of 21,and restructured a number of federal institutions. Originating with the seventh U.S. president,Andrew Jackson and his supporters,it became the nation's dominant political worldview for a generation. The term itself was in active use by the 1830s.
Historians who address the origins of the American Civil War today agree that the preservation of slavery in the United States was the principal aim of the 11 Southern states that declared their secession from the United States and united to form the Confederate States of America. However,while historians in the 21st century agree on the centrality of the conflict over slavery—it was not just "a cause" of the war but "the cause"—they disagree sharply on which aspects of this conflict were most important,and on the North’s reasons for refusing to allow the Southern states to secede. Proponents of the pseudo-historical Lost Cause ideology have denied that slavery was the principal cause of the secession,a view that has been disproven by the overwhelming historical evidence against it,notably the seceding states' own secession documents.
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 (1831–1896),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. He devoted his life to historical research and publishing a seven-volume history of the United States beginning in 1850;his work was published from 1893 to 1906. He published an eighth volume in 1920. His work,History of the Civil War,1861–1865 (1918),won the second-ever Pulitzer Prize for History that year.
Stephen Selwyn Harding was an American politician,lawyer,anti-slavery leader and ardent abolitionist in Indiana who served as governor of the Utah Territory (1862–1863) and as chief justice of the Colorado Supreme Court (1863–1865). Because Harding proved to be unpopular with the territory's Mormon leaders and citizens,he remained at Salt Lake City for less than a year before President Abraham Lincoln appointed him to the judgeship at Denver. In 1865 Harding returned to Indiana,where he practiced law until his retirement in 1881. Earlier in his political career,Harding helped organize the Liberty Party in Indiana and was the party's candidate for lieutenant governor of Indiana in 1843 and 1846,but lost both races. Harding subsequently became a member of the Free Soil Party in 1848 and was an early member of the Republican Party in Indiana in the 1850s.
The Second Party System was the political party system operating in the United States from about 1828 to 1852,after the First Party System ended. The system was characterized by rapidly rising levels of voter interest,beginning in 1828,as demonstrated by Election Day turnouts,rallies,partisan newspapers,and high degrees of personal loyalty to parties.
Richard Yates was the Governor of Illinois during the American Civil War and has been considered one of the most effective war governors. He took energetic measures to secure Cairo and St. Louis against rebel attack. Nicknamed the "Soldiers' Friend",he helped organize the Illinois contingent of Union soldiers,including commissioning Ulysses S. Grant as a colonel for an Illinois regiment. He supported the Emancipation Proclamation. He also represented Illinois in the United States House of Representatives (1851–1855) and in the U.S. Senate (1865–1871). As a Senator,he voted and spoke in favor of removing President Andrew Johnson from office. He was a Whig and then a Republican.
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,an 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.
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.
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.
