Daniel W. Crofts is an American historian and professor emeritus at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ). [1] He has written five books on Civil War era politics and other subjects. [2] His books are about Abraham Lincoln's proposal for a 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Abraham Lincoln and the politics of slavery, William Henry Hurlbert and his diary, Southampton, Virginia, and southern unionists. He received a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1968. [3] He formerly taught at George School. [3]
He is married to wife Betsy and has a daughter. He is a Quaker. [3] He has contributed to the New York Times blog "Disunion", [3] appeared on C-Span three times. [4]
Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 6, 1860. The Republican Party ticket of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin won a national popular plurality, a popular majority in the North where states had already abolished slavery, and a national electoral majority comprising only Northern electoral votes. Lincoln's election thus served as the main catalyst of the states that would become the Confederacy seceding from the Union. This marked the first time that a Republican was elected president. It was also the first presidential election in which both major party candidates were registered in the same home state; the others have been in 1904, 1920, 1940, 1944, and 2016. Lincoln's 39.7% of the popular vote is to date the lowest for any winner not decided by a contingent election.
In the American Civil War (1861–65), the border states or the Border South were four, later five, slave states in the Upper South that primarily supported the Union. They were Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, and after 1863, the new state of West Virginia. To their north they bordered free states of the Union, and all but Delaware bordered slave states of the Confederacy to their south.
The Corwin Amendment is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that has never been adopted, but owing to the absence of a ratification deadline, could theoretically still be adopted by the state legislatures. It would have shielded slavery within the states from the federal constitutional amendment process and from abolition or interference by Congress.
The Constitutional Union Party was a political party which stood in the 1860 United States elections. It mostly consisted of conservative former Whigs from the Southern United States who wanted to avoid secession over slavery and refused to join either the Republican Party or Democratic Party. The Constitutional Union Party campaigned on a simple platform "to recognize no political principle other than the Constitution of the country, the Union of the states, and the Enforcement of the Laws".
The Crittenden Compromise was an unsuccessful proposal to permanently enshrine slavery in the United States Constitution, and thereby make it unconstitutional for future congresses to end slavery. It was introduced by United States Senator John J. Crittenden on December 18, 1860. It aimed to resolve the secession crisis of 1860–1861 that eventually led to the American Civil War by addressing the fears and grievances of Southern pro-slavery factions, and by quashing anti-slavery activities. The Crittenden Compromise is not to be confused with the Crittenden Resolution, which provided that the Union would take no actions against slavery.
Abraham Lincoln's position on slavery in the United States is one of the most discussed aspects of his life. Lincoln frequently expressed his moral opposition to slavery in public and private. "I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong," he stated. "I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel." However, the question of what to do about it and how to end it, given that it was so firmly embedded in the nation's constitutional framework and in the economy of much of the country, even though concentrated in only the Southern United States, was complex and politically challenging. In addition, there was the unanswered question, which Lincoln had to deal with, of what would become of the four million slaves if liberated: how they would earn a living in a society that had almost always rejected them or looked down on their very presence.
The Peace Conference of 1861 was a meeting of 131 leading American politicians in February 1861, at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., on the eve of the American Civil War. The conference's purpose was to avoid, if possible, the secession of the eight slave states from the upper and border South that had not done so as of that date. The seven states that had already seceded did not attend.
John Brown Baldwin was a Virginia lawyer and Democratic politician, who served one term in Virginia House of Delegates before the Virginia Secession Convention of 1861, during which he was a Unionist. During the American Civil War, Baldwin believed his primary loyalty was to his state, and served as one of Virginia's representatives to the First and Second Confederate Congresses. He became one of the leading critics of President Jefferson Davis, who was seen by many as usurping the Confederacy's states' rights principles. During Congressional Reconstruction, Baldwin became Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates.
The National Union Party, commonly the Union Party or Unionists, was a wartime coalition of Republicans, War Democrats, and border state Unconditional Unionists that supported the Lincoln Administration during the American Civil War. It held the 1864 National Union Convention that nominated Abraham Lincoln for president and Andrew Johnson for vice president in the 1864 United States presidential election. Following Lincoln's successful re-election and assassination, Johnson tried and failed to sustain the Union Party as a vehicle for his presidential ambitions. The coalition did not contest the 1868 elections, but the Republican Party continued to use the "Union Republican" label throughout the period of Reconstruction.
The American Civil War significantly affected Tennessee, with every county witnessing combat. During the War, Tennessee was a Confederate state, and the last state to officially secede from the Union to join the Confederacy. Tennessee had been threatening to secede since before the Confederacy was even formed, but didn’t officially do so until after the fall of Fort Sumter when public opinion throughout the state drastically shifted. Tennessee seceded in protest to President Lincoln's April 15 Proclamation calling forth 75,000 members of state militias to suppress the rebellion. Tennessee provided the second largest number of troops for the Confederacy, and would also provide more southern unionist soldiers for the Union Army than any other state within the Confederacy.
The American state of Virginia became a prominent part of the Confederacy when it joined during the American Civil War. As a Southern slave-holding state, Virginia held the state convention to deal with the secession crisis and voted against secession on April 4, 1861. Opinion shifted after the Battle of Fort Sumter on April 12, and April 15, when U.S. President Abraham Lincoln called for troops from all states still in the Union to put down the rebellion. For all practical purposes, Virginia joined the Confederacy on April 17, though secession was not officially ratified until May 23. A Unionist government was established in Wheeling and the new state of West Virginia was created by an act of Congress from 50 counties of western Virginia, making it the only state to lose territory as a consequence of the war. Unionism was indeed strong also in other parts of the State, and during the war the Restored Government of Virginia was created as rival to the Confederate Government of Virginia, making it one of the states to have 2 governments during the Civil War.
The presidency of Abraham Lincoln began March 4, 1861, when Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as the 16th president of the United States, and ended upon his death on April 15, 1865, 42 days into his second term. Lincoln was the first member of the recently established Republican Party elected to the presidency. Lincoln successfully presided over the Union victory in the American Civil War, which dominated his presidency and resulted in the end of slavery. He was succeeded by Vice President Andrew Johnson.
William Henry Hurlbert was an American journalist and the possible author of “The Diary of a Public Man,” published in the North American Review in 1879. His responsibility for the Diary—once dubbed the “most gigantic” problem of uncertain authorship in American historical writing—was carefully concealed and has only recently been established.
The Diary of a Public Man was first published anonymously in the North American Review in 1879. Its entries are dated between December 28, 1860, and March 15, 1861, the desperate weeks just before the start of the American Civil War. The Diary appeared to offer verbatim accounts, penned by a long-time Washington insider, of behind-the-scenes discussions at the very highest levels during the greatest crisis the country had yet faced. Its pithy quotations attributed to the key principals -— Stephen A. Douglas, William H. Seward, and especially Abraham Lincoln —- have long been accepted by historians. David Potter, a leading specialist on 1860-61, said it contained "astonishing" revelations made by someone "who possessed an authoritative personal knowledge of affairs at the time of secession.” In the 21st century historians concluded that the diary was written by journalist William Henry Hurlbert in 1879, and represents not a real diary but a memoir. It contains both valuable unique information as well as a few fictional elements.
Frank Maloy Anderson was an author, historian and professor of history. He was born in Omaha, Nebraska and spent most of his adult life teaching and writing about American and Western European history. He was a prolific writer for The American Historical Review and is noted among American Civil War historians for his book The Diary of a Public Man.
The 1863 West Virginia gubernatorial election was the first gubernatorial election, held on Thursday, May 28, 1863. Unionist Arthur I. Boreman was elected virtually without opposition. This was the first of two gubernatorial elections held in West Virginia during the American Civil War; 17 counties were occupied by Confederate military forces on Election Day and did not participate in the balloting.
The Virginia Secession Convention of 1861 was called in the state capital of Richmond to determine whether Virginia would secede from the United States, govern the state during a state of emergency, and write a new Constitution for Virginia, which was subsequently voted down in a referendum under the Confederate Government.
Ivory Chamberlain was the editor of the New York Herald. He was a political supporter of his friend and neighbor Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune. He also worked for Manton Marble at the New York World. He wrote a biography of Millard Fillmore.
The presidential transition of Abraham Lincoln began when he won the United States 1860 United States presidential election, becoming the president-elect of the United States, and ended when Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861.
Unionists in the border states organized political parties to oppose secession from the United States during the American Civil War. They extended critical support to the wartime administration of Abraham Lincoln while remaining outside Lincoln's Republican Party. While some harbored antislavery sympathies, most Unionists viewed the abolitionist movement with hostility and initially resisted Lincoln's efforts on behalf of emancipation. Unionist governments were opposed by Copperheads who opposed Lincoln's wartime policies and in some cases the war itself, as well as Confederate regular and irregular military forces.