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The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which had been formed by states that had seceded from the Union. The central cause of the war was the dispute over whether slavery would be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prevented from doing so, which many believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction.
The Confederate States of America (CSA), commonly referred to as the Confederate States (C.S.), the Confederacy, or the South, was an unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United States that existed from February 8, 1861, to May 9, 1865. The Confederacy comprised eleven U.S. states that declared secession and warred against the United States during the American Civil War. The states are South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
The 1860 United States presidential election was the 19th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 6, 1860. In a four-way contest, the Republican Party ticket of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin won a national popular plurality, a popular majority in the North where states already had 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.
John Caldwell Calhoun was an American statesman and political theorist who served as the seventh vice president of the United States from 1825 to 1832. Born in South Carolina, he adamantly defended American slavery and sought to protect the interests of white Southerners. Calhoun began his political career as a nationalist, modernizer and proponent of a strong federal government and protective tariffs. In the late 1820s, his views changed radically, and he became a leading proponent of states' rights, limited government, nullification, and opposition to high tariffs. Calhoun saw Northern acceptance of those policies as a condition of the South's remaining in the Union. His beliefs heavily influenced the South's secession from the Union in 1860 and 1861. He was the first of two vice presidents to resign from the position, the second being Spiro Agnew, who resigned in 1973.
The Wilmot Proviso was an unsuccessful 1846 proposal in the United States Congress to ban slavery in territory acquired from Mexico in the Mexican–American War. The conflict over the Wilmot Proviso was one of the major events leading to the American Civil War.
The nullification crisis was a sectional political crisis in the United States in 1832 and 1833, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, which involved a confrontation between the state of South Carolina and the federal government. It ensued after South Carolina declared the federal Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 unconstitutional and therefore null and void within the sovereign boundaries of the state. However, courts at the state and federal level, including the U.S. Supreme Court, repeatedly have rejected the theory of nullification by states.
Historians who address the origins of the American Civil War agree that the preservation of the institution of slavery 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" according to Civil War historian Chris Mackowski—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.
Robert Barnwell Rhett was an American politician who served as a deputy from South Carolina to the Provisional Confederate States Congress from 1861 to 1862, a member of the US House of Representatives from South Carolina from 1837 to 1849, and US Senator from South Carolina from 1850 to 1852. As a staunch supporter of slavery and an early advocate of secession, he was a "Fire-Eater", nicknamed the "father of secession".
Philip Phillips was an American lawyer and politician from Cheraw, South Carolina, Mobile, Alabama, and Washington, D.C. He was a member of the Democratic Party who served as the U.S. representative from Alabama. Subsequently, he was a prominent lawyer in Washington, D.C., much involved in the political events surrounding the American Civil War.
The Opposition Party was a third party in the South in the years just before the American Civil War.
James Henley Thornwell was an American Presbyterian preacher, slaveowner, and religious writer from the U.S. state of South Carolina during the 19th century. During the American Civil War, Thornwell supported the Confederacy and preached a doctrine that claimed slavery to be morally right and justified by the tenets of Christianity. But contrary to many proponents of slavery, he preached that the African American population were people created in the image of God just like whites and that they should call slaves their brothers. He became prominent in the Old School Presbyterian denomination in the south, preaching and writing on theological and social issues. He taught at South Carolina College, eventually served as its president, and went on to teach at Columbia Theological Seminary. He was a contemporary of Charles Hodge and represented the southern branch of the Presbyterian church in debates on ecclesiology with Hodge.
Henry Laurens Pinckney was a U.S. Representative from South Carolina, and the son of Charles Pinckney and Mary Eleanor Laurens.
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.
Historiography examines how the past has been viewed or interpreted. Historiographic issues about the American Civil War include the name of the war, the origins or causes of the war, and President Abraham Lincoln's views and goals regarding slavery.
In the context of the United States, secession primarily refers to the voluntary withdrawal of one or more states from the Union that constitutes the United States; but may loosely refer to leaving a state or territory to form a separate territory or new state, or to the severing of an area from a city or county within a state. Advocates for secession are called disunionists by their contemporaries in various historical documents.
This timeline of events leading to the American Civil War is a chronologically ordered list of events and issues that historians recognize as origins and causes of the American Civil War. These events are roughly divided into two periods: the first encompasses the gradual build-up over many decades of the numerous social, economic, and political issues that ultimately contributed to the war's outbreak, and the second encompasses the five-month span following the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States in 1860 and culminating in the capture of Fort Sumter in April 1861.
William H. Brodnax, was a nineteenth-century American militia Brigadier General and American politician from Virginia.
Elizabeth R. Varon is an American historian, and Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History at the University of Virginia.
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.
A Disquisition on Government is a political treatise written by U.S. Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina and published posthumously in 1851. Written in response to what Calhoun saw as the growing subjugation of the Southern United States by the more populous Northern United States, especially in terms of Northern promotion of tariff legislation and opposition to slavery, the 100-page Disquisition promotes the idea of a concurrent majority in order to protect what he perceived to be the South's interests. The Disquisition, and other writings like it by Southern Fire-Eaters, increased the feeling of sectionalism in the South and led ultimately to secession and the American Civil War.
References
- ↑ "William W. Freehling Reexamines Nullification in Worcester, Oct. 22 « Abolitionism in Black and White". abolitionisminblackandwhite.com. Archived from the original on 25 November 2009. Retrieved 13 January 2022.
- 1 2 3 4 "Freehling, William W(ilhartz) 1935-". www.encyclopedia.com. Encyclopedia.com . Retrieved 16 May 2023.
- ↑ "William W. Freehling". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation... Retrieved 2023-05-16.
- ↑ Freehling, William W. (16 April 2011). "Henry Wise's Pistol". The New York Times . Retrieved 16 May 2023.
- ↑ Crofts, Daniel W. (1991). "Review of The Road to Disunion. Volume 1: Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854". The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. 99 (2): 207–210. ISSN 0042-6636.
- ↑ "William Bradshaw Marries Alison Harrison Goodyear". The New York Times . 21 June 1964. Retrieved 16 May 2023.
- ↑ Times, Special to The New York (21 December 1963). "Alison H. Goodyear Prospective Bride". The New York Times . Retrieved 16 May 2023.
- ↑ "Allan Nevins Prize - Past Winners". Society of American Historians. Archived from the original on 2011-07-19. Retrieved 16 March 2011.
- ↑ "VFH - Press Release - William Freehling - Lincoln Discussion". Archived from the original on 2010-11-30. Retrieved 2010-01-15.
- ↑ "Louis R. Gottschalk Lectures — University of Louisville". Archived from the original on 2010-05-28. Retrieved 2010-01-15.
- ↑ Remini, Robert V. (30 September 1990). "Plunging Into Civil War". The New York Times . Archived from the original on 2023-05-16. Retrieved 16 May 2023.
- ↑ Chaffin, Tom (12 June 1994). "In Short/Civil War". The New York Times . Retrieved 16 May 2023.
