Thurlow Weed
Thurlow Weed was a New York newspaper publisher and Whig and Republican politician. He was the principal political advisor to the prominent New York politician William H. Seward and was instrumental in the presidential nominations of William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, John C. Frémont. Born in Cairo, New York, Weed served in the War of 1812 and apprenticed for newspapers before winning election to the New York State Assembly, he met Seward in the assembly, forming a close political alliance that would last for several decades. Weed and Seward became leaders of the New York Anti-Masonic Party, Weed established the Albany Evening Journal. Weed helped establish the Whig Party in the 1830s, he helped Seward win election as Governor of New York and supported the successful presidential candidacies of Harrison and Taylor, though both died in office. Weed led the New York Whigs for much of the 1830s and 1840s but abandoned the Whigs following the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act, he helped organize the Republican Party and supported Frémont's nomination at the 1856 Republican National Convention.
He led the effort to nominate Seward at the 1860 Republican National Convention, but the convention nominated Abraham Lincoln instead. After the Civil War and Seward allied with President Andrew Johnson and supported Johnson's approach to Reconstruction. Weed retired from public life in 1867 and died in 1882. Weed was born into a family of farmers in Cairo, Greene County, New York on November 15, 1797, he received little formal schooling, spent much of his youth working as a cabin boy on boats that traveled the Hudson River, as a blacksmith's helper, as an errand boy in a print shop. After his family moved to central New York Weed was apprenticed to a printer. Although he was quite young at the time, Weed served in the War of 1812 as quartermaster sergeant of the 40th Regiment of the New York State Militia, working under quartermaster officer George Petrie during operations in and around Sackets Harbor. After the war he ran the printing presses for the Albany Register. Weed became interested in politics while working with the newspaper, was an early supporter of DeWitt Clinton.
In 1824, he was a strong supporter of the presidential bid of John Quincy Adams, used his influence for Adams's victory in New York. Weed was elected that year to the New York State Assembly. While serving in the Assembly, he met and befriended William H. Seward, whose legal and political careers were just beginning. Weed became a leader of the Anti-Masonic Party, which he helped become the main opposition at the state level to the Albany Regency organization of Martin Van Buren, to Andrew Jackson at the national level. In 1825, he was forced out in 1828 by Masonic interests, he subsequently founded the Enquirer, which became the voice of the Anti-Masonic movement in New York. That year, Weed again supported John Quincy Adams and worked to align the strong Anti-Masonic movement in New York with the national Adams organization. In 1829, Weed was again elected to the Assembly from this time as an Anti-Mason, he started the Albany Evening Journal. The Evening Journal was the largest Anti-Masonic newspaper.
In 1832, Weed supported Adams's ally Henry Clay, who ran for President as a "National Republican". He was a strong advocate of Clay's "American System" for economic development, including a national bank, "internal improvements" such as roads and railroads, a protective tariff. By 1834, the Adams-Clay organization was forming into the Whig Party. Most Anti-Masons joined the Whigs, regarding the new party as the best alternative to Jackson and Van Buren, enabling Weed to assume a leadership role in a larger and more orthodox political organization, his Evening Journal became the main Whig newspaper, by the 1840s it had the largest circulation of any political newspaper in the United States. Weed and other Whigs worked to blame Van Buren and the Democratic Party for the Panic of 1837. In 1838, he was one of William H. Seward's main supporters in Seward's successful campaign for governor, was credited with Seward's victory. Weed was a main supporter of William Henry Harrison's successful presidential bid in 1840, in which Harrison defeated Van Buren to become the first Whig president.
Weed was seen as the "boss" of New York's Whig Party, using the same tactics as the Regency—patronage and political favors—to attract supporters and keep order in the ranks, efforts he was able to reinforce through the Evening Journal. Under Weed's leadership, the Whigs became the dominant force in state politics for several years, Weed was arguably the most powerful politician in New York; as a practical politician, Weed was a pragmatist, rather than an idealist, always taking care to avoid controversial issues and positions that would decrease Whig support on election day. One exception was the issue of slavery, a subject on which Weed made public statements in opposition while trying to avoid the most radical language of those seen as uncompromising abolitionists. Harrison died only a month after taking office, was succeeded by John Tyler, a former Democrat, who disappointed Weed by abandoning Whig policies. Weed's frustration continued with Clay's narrow defeat in the 1844 presidential election.
Following the Mexican–American War, Zachary Taylor emerged as a Whig candidate for president, Weed supported his successful effort. But Taylor, like Harrison, died in office. Weed played a leading role in the passage of New York's Consolidation Act, whic
Abraham Lincoln and slavery
Abraham Lincoln's position on slavery is one of the most discussed aspects of his life. Lincoln expressed moral opposition to slavery in public and private, he attempted to bring about the eventual extinction of slavery by stopping its further expansion into any U. S. by proposing compensated emancipation in the early part of his presidency. Lincoln stood by the Republican Party's platform of 1860 stating that slavery should not be allowed to expand into any more U. S. territories. He worried that the extension of slavery in new western lands could block "free labor on free soil."As early as the 1850s, Lincoln had been politically attacked as an abolitionist. Howard Jones says that "in the prewar period, as well as into the first months of the American Civil War itself.... Lincoln believed it prudent to administer a slow death to slavery through gradual emancipation and voluntary colonization rather than to follow the abolitionist and demanding an immediate end to slavery without compensation to owners."
In 1863, Lincoln ordered the freedom of all slaves in the areas "in rebellion" and insisted on enforcement freeing millions of slaves, but he did not call for the immediate end of slavery everywhere in the U. S. until the proposed 13th Amendment became part of his party platform for the 1864 election. In 1842, Abraham Lincoln had married Mary Todd, a daughter of a slave-owning family from Kentucky. Lincoln returned to the political stage as a result of the 1854 Kansas–Nebraska Act and soon became a leading opponent of the "Slaveocracy"—the political power of the Southern slave owners; the Kansas–Nebraska Act, written to form the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, included language, designed by Stephen A. Douglas, which allowed the settlers to decide whether they would or would not accept slavery in their region. Lincoln was outraged by the repeal of the 1820 Missouri Compromise, which had outlawed slavery above the 36-30' parallel. During the Civil War, Lincoln used the war powers of the presidency to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, in January 1863..
It declared "all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States, shall be thenceforward, forever free" but exempted border states and those areas of slave states not in rebellion and therefore beyond the reach of the constitutional war power to emancipate. It changed the legal status of all slaves in the affected areas, as soon as the Union Army arrived, it did liberate the slaves in that area. On the first day, it affected tens of thousands of slaves, but when the war ended, in April 1865, only about fifteen percent of the slaves had been freed. Full abolition was achieved that year, with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery everywhere in the United States. Lincoln was born on February 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky, his family attended a Separate Baptists church, which had strict moral standards and opposed alcohol and slavery. The family moved north across the Ohio River to free territory and made a new start in Perry County.
Lincoln noted that this move was "partly on account of slavery" but due to land title difficulties. As a young man, he settled in the free state of Illinois. Lincoln, the leader most associated with the end of slavery in the United States, came to national prominence in the 1850s, following the advent of the Republican Party, whose official position was that freedom was "national," the natural condition of all areas under the direct sovereignty of the Constitution, whereas slavery was exceptional and sectional. Earlier, as a member of the Whig Party in the Illinois General Assembly, Lincoln issued a written protest of the assembly's passage of a resolution stating that slavery should not be abolished in Washington, D. C. In 1841, he won a court case, representing a black woman and her children who claimed she had been freed and could not be sold as a slave. In 1845, he defended Marvin Pond for harboring the fugitive slave John Hauley. In 1847, he lost a case representing a slave owner claiming return of fugitive slaves.
While a congressman from Illinois in 1846 to 1848, Lincoln supported the Wilmot Proviso, which, if it had been adopted, would have banned slavery in any U. S. territory won from Mexico. Lincoln, in collaboration with abolitionist Congressman Joshua R. Giddings, wrote a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia with compensation for the owners, enforcement to capture fugitive slaves, a popular vote on the matter. After leaving Congress in 1849 Lincoln became somewhat less active in politics until he was drawn back into it by the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854, which allowed territories to decide for themselves whether they would allow slavery. Lincoln was politically opposed to any expansion of it. At issue was extension into the western territories. On October 16, 1854, in his "Peoria Speech", Lincoln declared his opposition to slavery, which he repeated in his route to presidency. Speaking in his Kentucky accent, with a powerful voice, he said the Kansas Act had a "declared indifference, but as I must think, a covert real zeal for the spread of slavery.
I hate it. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world..."Impressed by the strength of anti-black racism in his
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was an American statesman and lawyer who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the nation through the American Civil War, its bloodiest war and its greatest moral and political crisis, he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, modernized the U. S. economy. Born in Kentucky, Lincoln grew up on the frontier in a poor family. Self-educated, he became Whig Party leader, state legislator and Congressman, he left government to resume his law practice, but angered by the success of Democrats in opening the prairie lands to slavery, reentered politics in 1854. He became a leader in the new Republican Party and gained national attention in 1858 for debating and losing to national Democratic leader Stephen A. Douglas in a Senate campaign, he ran for President in 1860, sweeping the North and winning. Southern pro-slavery elements took his win as proof that the North was rejecting the Constitutional rights of Southern states to practice slavery.
They began the process of seceding from the union. To secure its independence, the new Confederate States of America fired on Fort Sumter, one of the few U. S. forts in the South. Lincoln called up volunteers and militia to restore the Union; as the leader of the moderate faction of the Republican Party, Lincoln confronted Radical Republicans, who demanded harsher treatment of the South. Lincoln fought the factions by pitting them against each other, by distributing political patronage, by appealing to the American people, his Gettysburg Address became an iconic call for nationalism, equal rights and democracy. He suspended habeas corpus, he averted British intervention by defusing the Trent Affair. Lincoln supervised the war effort, including the selection of generals and the naval blockade that shut down the South's trade; as the war progressed, he maneuvered to end slavery, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. Lincoln managed his own re-election campaign, he sought to reconcile his damaged nation by avoiding retribution against the secessionists.
A few days after the Battle of Appomattox Court House, he was shot by John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, on April 14, 1865, died the following day. Abraham Lincoln is remembered as the United States' martyr hero, he is ranked both by scholars and the public as among the greatest U. S. presidents. Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, as the second child of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, in a one-room log cabin on Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky, he was a descendant of Samuel Lincoln, an Englishman who migrated from Hingham, Norfolk, to its namesake Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1638. Samuel's grandson and great-grandson began the family's westward migration, passing through New Jersey and Virginia. Lincoln's paternal grandfather and namesake, Captain Abraham Lincoln, moved the family from Virginia to Jefferson County, Kentucky, in the 1780s. Captain Lincoln was killed in an Indian raid in 1786, his children, including eight-year-old Thomas, Abraham's father, witnessed the attack.
Thomas worked at odd jobs in Kentucky and in Tennessee, before settling with members of his family in Hardin County, Kentucky, in the early 1800s. Lincoln's mother, Nancy, is assumed to have been the daughter of Lucy Hanks, although no record documents this. Thomas and Nancy married on June 12, 1806, in Washington County, moved to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, they produced three children: Sarah, born on February 10, 1807. Thomas Lincoln leased farms in Kentucky. Thomas became embroiled in legal disputes, lost all but 200 acres of his land in court disputes over property titles. In 1816, the family moved to Indiana, where the survey process was more reliable and land titles were more secure. Indiana was a "free" territory, they settled in an "unbroken forest" in Hurricane Township, Perry County. In 1860, Lincoln noted that the family's move to Indiana was "partly on account of slavery", but due to land title difficulties. In Kentucky and Indiana, Thomas worked as a farmer and carpenter, he owned farms, town lots and livestock, paid taxes, sat on juries, appraised estates, served on country slave patrols, guarded prisoners.
Thomas and Nancy were members of a Separate Baptists church, which forbade alcohol and slavery. Overcoming financial challenges, Thomas obtained clear title to 80 acres of land in what became known as the Little Pigeon Creek Community. On October 5, 1818, Nancy Lincoln died of milk sickness, leaving 11-year-old Sarah in charge of a household that included her father, 9-year-old Abraham, Dennis Hanks, Nancy's 19-year-old orphaned cousin; those who knew Lincoln recalled that he was distraught over his sister's death on January 20, 1828, while giving birth to a stillborn son. On December 2, 1819, Thomas married Sarah "Sally" Bush Johnston, a widow from Elizabethtown, with three children of her own. Abraham became close to his stepmother, whom he referred t
God
In monotheistic thought, God is conceived of as the supreme being, creator deity, principal object of faith. The conceptions of God, as described by theologians include the attributes of omniscience, omnipresence, as having an eternal and necessary existence. Depending on one's kind of theism, these attributes are used either in way of analogy, or in a literal sense as distinct properties. God is most held to be incorporeal. Incorporeality and corporeality of God are related to conceptions of transcendence and immanence of God, with positions of synthesis such as the "immanent transcendence". Psychoanalyst Carl Jung equated religious ideas of God with transcendental aspects of consciousness in his interpretation; some religions describe God without reference to gender, while others or their translations use sex-specific terminology. Judaism attributes only a grammatical gender to God, using terms such as "Him" or "Father" for convenience. God has been conceived as either impersonal. In theism, God is the creator and sustainer of the universe, while in deism, God is the creator, but not the sustainer, of the universe.
In pantheism, God is the universe itself. In atheism, there is an absence of belief in God. In agnosticism, the existence of God is deemed unknowable. God has been conceived as the source of all moral obligation, the "greatest conceivable existent". Many notable philosophers have developed arguments against the existence of God. Monotheists refer to their gods using names prescribed by their respective religions, with some of these names referring to certain cultural ideas about their god's identity and attributes. In the ancient Egyptian era of Atenism the earliest recorded monotheistic religion, this deity was called Aten, premised on being the one "true" Supreme Being and creator of the universe. In the Hebrew Bible and Judaism, Adonai, YHWH and other names are used as the names of God. Yahweh and Jehovah, possible vocalizations of YHWH, are used in Christianity. In the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, coexisting in three "persons", is called the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. In Islam, the name Allah is used, while Muslims have a multitude of titular names for God.
In Hinduism, Brahman is considered a monistic concept of God. In Chinese religion, Shangdi is conceived as the progenitor of the universe, intrinsic to it and bringing order to it. Other religions have names for the concept, for instance, Baha in the Bahá'í Faith, Waheguru in Sikhism, Sang Hyang Widhi Wasa in Balinese Hinduism, Ahura Mazda in Zoroastrianism; the many different conceptions of God, competing claims as to God's characteristics and actions, have led to the development of ideas of omnitheism, pandeism, or a perennial philosophy, which postulates that there is one underlying theological truth, of which all religions express a partial understanding, as to which "the devout in the various great world religions are in fact worshipping that one God, but through different, overlapping concepts". The earliest written form of the Germanic word God comes from the 6th-century Christian Codex Argenteus; the English word itself is derived from the Proto-Germanic * ǥuđan. The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European form * ǵhu-tó-m was based on the root * ǵhau-, which meant either "to call" or "to invoke".
The Germanic words for God were neuter—applying to both genders—but during the process of the Christianization of the Germanic peoples from their indigenous Germanic paganism, the words became a masculine syntactic form. In the English language, capitalization is used for names by which a god is known, including'God'; the capitalized form of god is not used for multiple gods or when used to refer to the generic idea of a deity. The English word God and its counterparts in other languages are used for any and all conceptions and, in spite of significant differences between religions, the term remains an English translation common to all; the same holds for Hebrew El, but in Judaism, God is given a proper name, the tetragrammaton YHWH, in origin the name of an Edomite or Midianite deity, Yahweh. In many translations of the Bible, when the word LORD is in all capitals, it signifies that the word represents the tetragrammaton. Allāh is the Arabic term with no plural used by Muslims and Arabic speaking Christians and Jews meaning "The God", while "ʾilāh" is the term used for a deity or a god in general.
God may be given a proper name in monotheistic currents of Hinduism which emphasize the personal nature of God, with early references to his name as Krishna-Vasudeva in Bhagavata or Vishnu and Hari. Ahura Mazda is the name for God used in Zoroastrianism. "Mazda", or rather the Avestan stem-form Mazdā-, nominative Mazdå, reflects Proto-Iranian *Mazdāh. It is taken to be the proper name of the spirit, like its Sanskrit cognate medhā, means "intelligence" or "wisdom". Both the Avestan and Sanskrit words reflect Proto-Indo-Iranian *mazdhā-, from Proto-Indo-European mn̩sdʰeh1 meaning "placing one's mind", hence "wise". Waheguru is a term most used in Sikhism to refer to God, it means "Wonderful Teacher" in the Punjabi language. Vāhi means "wonderful" and guru is a term denoting "teacher". Waheguru is described by some as an experience of ecstasy, beyond all descriptions; the most common usage of the word "Waheguru" is in the greeting Sikhs use with each other: Baha, the "greates
Adam
Adam is the name used in the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis and in the Quran for the first man created by God, but it is used in a collective sense as "mankind" and individually as "a human". Biblical Adam is created from adamah, Genesis 1–8 makes considerable play of the bond between them, for Adam is estranged from the earth through his disobedience; the majority view among scholars is that the book of Genesis dates from the Persian period, but the absence from the rest of the Hebrew Bible of all the other characters and incidents mentioned in chapters 1–11 of Genesis, has led a sizable minority to the conclusion that Genesis 1–11 was composed much possibly in the 3rd century BCE. The Bible uses the word אָדָם in all of its senses: collectively, gender nonspecific, male. In Genesis 1:27 "adam" is used in the collective sense, the interplay between the individual "Adam" and the collective "humankind" is a main literary component to the events that occur in the Garden of Eden, the ambiguous meanings embedded throughout the moral and spiritual terms of the narrative reflecting the complexity of the human condition.
Genesis 2:7 is the first verse where "Adam" takes on the sense of an individual man, the context of sex is absent. A recurring literary motif is the bond between Adam and the earth: God creates Adam by molding him out of clay in the final stages of the creation narrative. After the loss of innocence, God curses the earth as punishment for his disobedience. Adam and humanity is cursed to return to the earth from which he was formed; this "earthly" aspect is a component of Adam's identity, Adam's curse of estrangement from the earth seems to describe humankind's divided nature of being earthly yet separated from nature. God himself who took of the dust from all four corners of the earth with each color created Adam therewith, where the soul of Adam is the image of God. Genesis 1 tells of God's creation of the world and its creatures, with humankind as the last of his creatures: "Male and female created He them, blessed them, called their name Adam...". God blesses mankind, commands them to "be fruitful and multiply", gives them "dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, over the cattle, over all the earth, over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth".
In Genesis 2, God forms "Adam", this time meaning a single male human, out of "the dust of the ground" and "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life". God places this first man in the Garden of Eden, telling him that "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt die". God notes that "It is not good that the man should be alone" and brings the animals to Adam, who gives them their names, but among all the animals there was not found a companion for him. God causes a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and forms a woman, Adam awakes and greets her as his helpmate. Genesis 3, the story of the Fall: A serpent persuades the woman to disobey God's command and eat of the tree of knowledge, which gives wisdom. Woman convinces Adam to do whereupon they become conscious of their nakedness, cover themselves, hide from the sight of God. God questions Adam. God passes judgment, first upon the serpent, condemned to go on his belly the woman, condemned to pain in childbirth and subordination to her husband, Adam, condemned to labour on the earth for his food and to return to it on his death.
God expels the man and woman from the garden, lest they eat of the Tree of Life and become immortal. The chiastic structure of the death oracle given to Adam in Genesis 3:19 forms a link between man's creation from "dust" to the "return" of his beginnings. A you return B to the ground C since from it you were taken C' for dust you are B' and to dust A' you will returnGenesis 4 deals with the birth of Adam's sons Cain and Abel and the story of the first murder, followed by the birth of a third son, Seth. Genesis 5, the Book of the Generations of Adam, lists the descendants of Adam from Seth to Noah with their ages at the birth of their first sons and their ages at death; the chapter notes that Adam does not name them. Adam possessed a body of light. According to Jewish mystical tradition the original glory of Adam can be regained through mystical contemplation of God; the rabbis, puzzled by the verse of Genesis 1 which states that God created man and woman together, told that when God created Adam he created a woman from the dust, as he had created Adam, named her Lilith.
Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America referred to as the Confederacy, was an unrecognized country in North America that existed from 1861 to 1865. The Confederacy was formed by seven secessionist slave-holding states—South Carolina, Florida, Georgia and Texas—in the Lower South region of the United States, whose economy was dependent upon agriculture cotton, a plantation system that relied upon the labor of African-American slaves; each state declared its secession from the United States, which became known as the Union during the ensuing civil war, following the November 1860 election of Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln to the U. S. presidency on a platform which opposed the expansion of slavery into the western territories. Before Lincoln took office in March, a new Confederate government was established in February 1861, considered illegal by the government of the United States. States volunteered militia units and the new government hastened to form its own Confederate States Army from scratch overnight.
After the American Civil War began in April, four slave states of the Upper South—Virginia, Arkansas and North Carolina—also declared their secession and joined the Confederacy. The Confederacy accepted Missouri and Kentucky as members, although neither declared secession nor were they largely controlled by Confederate forces; the government of the United States rejected the claims of secession and considered the Confederacy illegally founded. The War began with the Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, a Union fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. No foreign government recognized the Confederacy as an independent country, although Great Britain and France granted it belligerent status, which allowed Confederate agents to contract with private concerns for arms and other supplies. In early 1865, after four years of heavy fighting which led to 620,000–850,000 military deaths, all the Confederate forces surrendered and the Confederacy vanished; the war lacked a formal end.
By 1865 Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States of America for the duration of the civil war, lamented that the Confederacy had "disappeared". On February 22, 1862, the Confederate Constitution of seven state signatories – Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia and Texas – replaced the Provisional Constitution of February 8, 1861, with one stating in its preamble a desire for a "permanent federal government". Four additional slave-holding states – Virginia, Arkansas and North Carolina – declared their secession and joined the Confederacy following a call by U. S. President Abraham Lincoln for troops from each state to recapture Sumter and other seized federal properties in the South. Missouri and Kentucky were represented by partisan factions adopting the forms of state governments without control of substantial territory or population in either case; the antebellum state governments in both maintained their representation in the Union. Fighting for the Confederacy were two of the "Five Civilized Tribes" – the Choctaw and the Chickasaw – in Indian Territory and a new, but uncontrolled, Confederate Territory of Arizona.
Efforts by certain factions in Maryland to secede were halted by federal imposition of martial law. A Unionist government was formed in opposition to the secessionist state government in Richmond and administered the western parts of Virginia, occupied by Federal troops; the Restored Government recognized the new state of West Virginia, admitted to the Union during the war on June 20, 1863, re-located to Alexandria for the rest of the war. Confederate control over its claimed territory and population in congressional districts shrank from 73% to 34% during the course of the American Civil War due to the Union's successful overland campaigns, its control of the inland waterways into the South, its blockade of the southern coast. With the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, the Union made abolition of slavery a war goal; as Union forces moved southward, large numbers of plantation slaves were freed. Many joined the Union lines, enrolling in service as soldiers and laborers; the most notable advance was Sherman's "March to the Sea" in late 1864.
Much of the Confederacy's infrastructure was destroyed, including telegraphs and bridges. Plantations in the path of Sherman's forces were damaged. Internal movement became difficult for Southerners, weakening the economy and limiting army mobility; these losses created an insurmountable disadvantage in men and finance. Public support for Confederate President Jefferson Davis's administration eroded over time due to repeated military reverses, economic hardships, allegations of autocratic government. After four years of campaigning, Richmond was captured by Union forces in April 1865. A few days General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant signalling the collapse of the Confederacy. President Davis was captured on May 10, 1865, jailed in preparation for a treason trial, never held; the initial Confederacy was established in the Montgomery Convention in February 1861 by seven states (South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana
Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation, or Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. It changed the federal legal status of more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the designated areas of the South from slave to free. As soon as a slave escaped the control of the Confederate government, by running away or through advances of federal troops, the former slave became free; the rebel surrender liberated and resulted in the proclamation's application to all of the designated former slaves. It did not cover slaves in Union areas, it was issued as a war measure during the American Civil War, directed to all of the areas in rebellion and all segments of the executive branch of the United States. The Proclamation ordered the freedom of all slaves in ten states; because it was issued under the president's authority to suppress rebellion, it excluded areas not in rebellion, but still applied to more than 3.5 million of the 4 million slaves.
The Proclamation was based on the president's constitutional authority as commander in chief of the armed forces. The Proclamation was issued in January 1863 after U. S government issued a series of warnings in the summer of 1862 under the Second Confiscation Act, allowing Southern Confederate supporters 60 days to surrender, or face confiscation of land and slaves; the Proclamation ordered that suitable persons among those freed could be enrolled into the paid service of United States' forces, ordered the Union Army to "recognize and maintain the freedom of" the ex-slaves. The Proclamation did not compensate the owners, did not outlaw slavery, did not grant citizenship to the ex-slaves, it made the eradication of slavery an explicit war goal, in addition to the goal of reuniting the Union. Around 25,000 to 75,000 slaves in regions where the US Army was active were emancipated, it could not be enforced in areas still under rebellion, but, as the Union army took control of Confederate regions, the Proclamation provided the legal framework for freeing more than three and a half million slaves in those regions.
Prior to the Proclamation, in accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, escaped slaves were either returned to their masters or held in camps as contraband for return. The Proclamation applied only to slaves in Confederate-held lands. Excluded were some regions controlled by the Union army. Emancipation in those places would come after separate state actions or the December 1865 ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, which made slavery and indentured servitude, except for those duly convicted of a crime, illegal everywhere subject to United States jurisdiction. On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary warning that he would order the emancipation of all slaves in any state that did not end its rebellion against the Union by January 1, 1863. None of the Confederate states restored themselves to the Union, Lincoln's order was signed and took effect on January 1, 1863; the Emancipation Proclamation outraged white Southerners. It angered some Northern Democrats, energized anti-slavery forces, undermined elements in Europe that wanted to intervene to help the Confederacy.
The Proclamation lifted the spirits of African Americans both slave. It led many slaves to escape from their masters and get to Union lines to obtain their freedom, to join the Union Army; the Emancipation Proclamation broadened the goals of the Civil War. While slavery had been a major issue that led to the war, Lincoln's only mission at the start of the war was to maintain the Union; the Proclamation made freeing the slaves an explicit goal of the Union war effort. Establishing the abolition of slavery as one of the two primary war goals served to deter intervention by Britain and France; the Emancipation Proclamation was never challenged in court. To ensure the abolition of slavery in all of the U. S. Lincoln pushed for passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, insisted that Reconstruction plans for Southern states require abolition in new state constitutions. Congress passed the 13th Amendment by the necessary two-thirds vote on January 31, 1865, it was ratified by the states on December 6, 1865, ending legal slavery.
The United States Constitution of 1787 did not use the word "slavery" but included several provisions about unfree persons. The Three-Fifths Compromise allocated Congressional representation based "on the whole Number of free Persons" and "three fifths of all other Persons". Under the Fugitive Slave Clause, "o person held to service or labour in one state" would be freed by escaping to another. Article I, Section 9 allowed Congress to pass legislation to outlaw the "Importation of Persons", but not until 1808. However, for purposes of the Fifth Amendment—which states that, "No person shall... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"—slaves were understood as property. Although abolitionists used the Fifth Amendment to argue against slavery, it became part of the legal basis for treating slaves as property with Dred Scott v. Sandford. So
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