1.
Wikisource
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Wikisource is an online digital library of free content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole and the name for each instance of that project, the projects aims are to host all forms of free text, in many languages, and translations. Originally conceived as an archive to store useful or important historical texts, the project officially began in November 24,2003 under the name Project Sourceberg. The name Wikisource was adopted later that year and it received its own domain name seven months later, the project has come under criticism for lack of reliability but it is also cited by organisations such as the National Archives and Records Administration. The project holds works that are either in the domain or freely licensed, professionally published works or historical source documents, not vanity products. Verification was initially made offline, or by trusting the reliability of digital libraries. Now works are supported by online scans via the ProofreadPage extension, some individual Wikisources, each representing a specific language, now only allow works backed up with scans. While the bulk of its collection are texts, Wikisource as a whole hosts other media, some Wikisources allow user-generated annotations, subject to the specific policies of the Wikisource in question. Wikisources early history included several changes of name and location, the original concept for Wikisource was as storage for useful or important historical texts. These texts were intended to support Wikipedia articles, by providing evidence and original source texts. The collection was focused on important historical and cultural material. The project was originally called Project Sourceberg during its planning stages, in 2001, there was a dispute on Wikipedia regarding the addition of primary source material, leading to edit wars over their inclusion or deletion. Project Sourceberg was suggested as a solution to this, perhaps Project Sourceberg can mainly work as an interface for easily linking from Wikipedia to a Project Gutenberg file, and as an interface for people to easily submit new work to PG. Wed want to complement Project Gutenberg--how, exactly, and Jimmy Wales adding like Larry, Im interested that we think it over to see what we can add to Project Gutenberg. It seems unlikely that primary sources should in general be editable by anyone -- I mean, Shakespeare is Shakespeare, unlike our commentary on his work, the project began its activity at ps. wikipedia. org. The contributors understood the PS subdomain to mean either primary sources or Project Sourceberg, however, this resulted in Project Sourceberg occupying the subdomain of the Pashto Wikipedia. A vote on the name changed it to Wikisource on December 6,2003. Despite the change in name, the project did not move to its permanent URL until July 23,2004, since Wikisource was initially called Project Sourceberg, its first logo was a picture of an iceberg
2.
American Civil War
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The American Civil War was an internal conflict fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865. The Union faced secessionists in eleven Southern states grouped together as the Confederate States of America, the Union won the war, which remains the bloodiest in U. S. history. Among the 34 U. S. states in February 1861, War broke out in April 1861 when Confederates attacked the U. S. fortress of Fort Sumter. The Confederacy grew to eleven states, it claimed two more states, the Indian Territory, and the southern portions of the western territories of Arizona. The Confederacy was never recognized by the United States government nor by any foreign country. The states that remained loyal, including border states where slavery was legal, were known as the Union or the North, the war ended with the surrender of all the Confederate armies and the dissolution of the Confederate government in the spring of 1865. The war had its origin in the issue of slavery. The Confederacy collapsed and 4 million slaves were freed, but before his inauguration, seven slave states with cotton-based economies formed the Confederacy. The first six to declare secession had the highest proportions of slaves in their populations, the first seven with state legislatures to resolve for secession included split majorities for unionists Douglas and Bell in Georgia with 51% and Louisiana with 55%. Alabama had voted 46% for those unionists, Mississippi with 40%, Florida with 38%, Texas with 25%, of these, only Texas held a referendum on secession. Eight remaining slave states continued to reject calls for secession, outgoing Democratic President James Buchanan and the incoming Republicans rejected secession as illegal. Lincolns March 4,1861 inaugural address declared that his administration would not initiate a civil war, speaking directly to the Southern States, he reaffirmed, I have no purpose, directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the United States where it exists. I believe I have no right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. After Confederate forces seized numerous federal forts within territory claimed by the Confederacy, efforts at compromise failed, the Confederates assumed that European countries were so dependent on King Cotton that they would intervene, but none did, and none recognized the new Confederate States of America. Hostilities began on April 12,1861, when Confederate forces fired upon Fort Sumter, while in the Western Theater the Union made significant permanent gains, in the Eastern Theater, the battle was inconclusive in 1861–62. The autumn 1862 Confederate campaigns into Maryland and Kentucky failed, dissuading British intervention, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which made ending slavery a war goal. To the west, by summer 1862 the Union destroyed the Confederate river navy, then much of their western armies, the 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River. In 1863, Robert E. Lees Confederate incursion north ended at the Battle of Gettysburg, Western successes led to Ulysses S. Grants command of all Union armies in 1864
3.
Slavery in the United States
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Slavery had been practiced in British North America from early colonial days, and was legal in all Thirteen Colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. By the time of the American Revolution, the status of slave had been institutionalized as a racial caste associated with African ancestry, when the United States Constitution was ratified, a relatively small number of free people of color were among the voting citizens. During and immediately following the Revolutionary War, abolitionist laws were passed in most Northern states, most of these states had a higher proportion of free labor than in the South and economies based on different industries. They abolished slavery by the end of the 18th century, some with gradual systems that kept adults as slaves for two decades. But the rapid expansion of the industry in the Deep South after the invention of the cotton gin greatly increased demand for slave labor. Congress during the Jefferson administration prohibited the importation of slaves, effective in 1808, domestic slave trading, however, continued at a rapid pace, driven by labor demands from the development of cotton plantations in the Deep South. More than one million slaves were sold from the Upper South, which had a surplus of labor, New communities of African-American culture were developed in the Deep South, and the total slave population in the South eventually reached 4 million before liberation. As the West was developed for settlement, the Southern state governments wanted to keep a balance between the number of slave and free states to maintain a balance of power in Congress. The new territories acquired from Britain, France, and Mexico were the subject of major political compromises, by 1850, the newly rich cotton-growing South was threatening to secede from the Union, and tensions continued to rise. When Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election on a platform of halting the expansion of slavery, the first six states to secede held the greatest number of slaves in the South. Shortly after, the Civil War began when Confederate forces attacked the US Armys Fort Sumter, four additional slave states then seceded. In the early years of the Chesapeake Bay settlements, colonial officials found it difficult to attract and retain laborers under the frontier conditions. Most laborers came from Britain as indentured servants, having signed contracts of indenture to pay with work for their passage, their upkeep and training and these indentured servants were young people who intended to become permanent residents. In some cases, convicted criminals were transported to the colonies as indentured servants, the indentured servants were not slaves, but were required to work for four to seven years in Virginia to pay the cost of their passage and maintenance. Historians estimate that more than half of all immigrants to the English colonies of North America during the 17th and 18th centuries came as indentured servants. The number of indentured servants among immigrants was particularly high in the South, many Germans, Scots-Irish, and Irish came to the colonies in the 18th century, settling in the backcountry of Pennsylvania and further south. The planters in the South found that the problem with indentured servants was that many left after several years, just when they had become skilled. In addition, an economy in England in the late 17th
4.
Missouri Compromise
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The Missouri Compromise is the title generally attached to the legislation passed by the 16th Congress of the United States on May 8,1820. The measures provided for the admission of the District of Maine as a free to ratify a state constitution that both did not recognize and prohibited slavery within the state. Further, the Compromise provided that the Missouri territory was free to enact a constitution that both recognized as legal and permitted, the institution of chattel slavery. With these actions, the Compromise committed the largest remaining portion of Purchase territory to free soil, however, South of the parallel no slavery restrictions were imposed in the Arkansas Territory, which later became Indian territory, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. There also were not any statements about restrictions or recognition of the institution of slavery at or South of the latitude, President James Monroe signed the legislation on April 6,1820. The compromise bills served to quell the furious sectional debates that had first erupted during the session of the 15th Congress. On February 3,1819, Representative James Tallmadge, Jr. a Jeffersonian Republican from New York State, had submitted two amendments to Missouris request for statehood. The first proposed to prohibit further slave migration into Missouri. At issue among southern legislators was the encroachment by their northern free state colleagues in what they considered a purely sectional concern, nonetheless, the more populous North held a firm numerical advantage in the House. Jeffersonian Republicans in the North ardently maintained that an interpretation of the Constitution required that Congress act to limit the spread of slavery on egalitarian grounds. The slave-holding states were acutely aware that maintaining a balance in the number of states was necessary to ensure political equilibrium in the US Senate. The South sought to enlist Missouri to maintain Southern political preeminence, the Missouri question in the 15th Congress ended in stalemate on March 4,1819, the House sustaining its northern antislavery position, and the Senate blocking a slavery restricted statehood. Antislavery agitation grew in the North in the aftermath of the debates, as the 16th Congress assembled in December 1819, the two houses remained thoroughly polarized over slavery in the Louisiana Purchase territories. Thomas of Illinois added a proviso, excluding slavery from all remaining lands of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36 30’ parallel. The combined measures passed the Senate, only to be voted down in the House by those Northern representatives who held out for a free Missouri, speaker of the House of Representatives Henry Clay of Kentucky, in a desperate bid to break the deadlock, divided the Senate bills. The legislation extracted by the served to effect a brokered truce or armistice rather than a genuine compromise. The crux of the Compromise was that it circumvented the deepening disaffection among Jeffersonian Republicans, the Era of Good Feelings, closely associated with the administration of President James Monroe, was characterized by the dissolution of national political identities. The end of opposition parties also meant the end of party discipline, rather than produce political harmony, as President James Monroe had hoped, amalgamation had led to intense rivalries among Jeffersonian Republicans
5.
Nullification Crisis
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It ensued after South Carolina declared that the federal Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and therefore null and void within the sovereign boundaries of the state. The US suffered an economic downturn throughout the 1820s, and South Carolina was particularly affected, many South Carolina politicians blamed the change in fortunes on the national tariff policy that developed after the War of 1812 to promote American manufacturing over its European competition. The controversial and highly protective Tariff of 1828 was enacted into law during the presidency of John Quincy Adams, the tariff was opposed in the South and parts of New England. By 1828, South Carolina state politics increasingly organized around the tariff issue and its opponents expected that the election of Jackson as President would result in the tariff being significantly reduced. In Washington, a split on the issue occurred between Jackson and Vice President John C. Calhoun, a native South Carolinian and the most effective proponent of the theory of state nullification. On July 14,1832, before Calhoun had resigned the Vice Presidency in order to run for the Senate where he could effectively defend nullification, Jackson signed into law the Tariff of 1832. This compromise tariff received the support of most northerners and half of the southerners in Congress, military preparations to resist anticipated federal enforcement were initiated by the state. The South Carolina convention reconvened and repealed its Nullification Ordinance on March 15,1833, the crisis was over, and both sides could find reasons to claim victory. The tariff rates were reduced and stayed low to the satisfaction of the South, by the 1850s the issues of the expansion of slavery into the western territories and the threat of the Slave Power became the central issues in the nation. Later in the decade the Alien and Sedition Acts led to the states rights position being articulated in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. ”The key sentence, and the word nullification was used in supplementary Resolutions passed by Kentucky in 1799. He was chairman of a committee of the Virginia Legislature which issued a book-length Report on the Resolutions of 1798 and this asserted that the state did not claim legal force. The declarations in such cases are expressions of opinion, unaccompanied by other effect than what they may produce upon opinion, the opinions of the judiciary, on the other hand, are carried into immediate effect by force. But, the four presidential terms spanning the period from 1800 to 1817 did little to advance the cause of states’ rights and much to weaken it. ”Over Jefferson’s opposition, the power of the federal judiciary, led by Federalist Chief Justice John Marshall, increased. Jefferson expanded federal powers with the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory, opposition to the War of 1812 was centered in New England. Delegates to a convention in Hartford, Connecticut met in December 1814 to consider a New England response to Madison’s war policy, the debate allowed many radicals to argue the cause of states’ rights and state sovereignty. In the end, moderate voices dominated and the product was not secession or nullification. After the conclusion of the War of 1812 Sean Wilentz notes, This spirit of nationalism was linked to the tremendous growth and economic prosperity of this post war era
6.
United States v. The Amistad
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United States v. Schooner Amistad,40 U. S.518, was a United States Supreme Court case resulting from the rebellion of Africans on board the Spanish schooner La Amistad in 1839. It was a freedom suit that involved international issues and parties. The historian Samuel Eliot Morison in 1965 described it as the most important court case involving slavery before being eclipsed by that of Dred Scott, the schooner was traveling along the coast of Cuba on its way to a port for re-sale of the slaves. The African captives, who had kidnapped in Sierra Leone and illegally sold into slavery and shipped to Cuba, escaped their shackles. They killed the captain and the cook, two crew members escaped in a lifeboat. The Africans directed the survivors to return them to Africa, the crew tricked them, sailing north at night. The Amistad was later apprehended near Long Island, New York, by the United States Revenue Cutter Service, the widely publicized court cases in the United States federal district and Supreme Court, which addressed international issues, helped the abolitionist movement. The captives were ruled to have acted as men when they fought to escape their illegal confinement. The Court ruled the Africans were entitled to take whatever measures necessary to secure their freedom. Under international and sectional pressure, U. S. President Martin Van Buren ordered the case appealed to the Supreme Court. It affirmed the court ruling on March 9,1841, and authorized the release of the Africans. Supporters arranged for housing of the Africans in Farmington, Connecticut as well as funds for travel. In 1842 they transported by ship those who wanted to return to Africa, on June 27,1839, La Amistad, a Spanish vessel, departed from the port of Havana, Cuba, for the Province of Puerto Principe, also in Cuba. The masters of La Amistad were the ships captain Ramón Ferrer, José Ruiz, with Ferrer was his personal slave Antonio. Ruiz was transporting 49 Africans, entrusted to him by the governor-general of Cuba, Montez held four additional Africans, also entrusted to him by the governor-general. As the voyage took only four days, the crew had brought four days’ worth of rations. On July 2,1839, one of the Africans, Cinqué, freed himself, the Mende Africans killed the ships cook, Celestino, who had told them that they were to be killed and eaten by their captors. The slaves also killed Captain Ferrer, the struggle resulted as well in the deaths of two Africans, two sailors escaped in a lifeboat
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Texas annexation
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The Texas annexation was the 1845 incorporation of the Republic of Texas into the United States of America, which was admitted to the Union as the 28th state on December 29,1845. The Republic of Texas declared independence from the Republic of Mexico on March 2,1836, at the time the vast majority of the Texian population favored the annexation of the Republic by the United States. Moreover, they wished to avoid a war with Mexico, whose government refused to acknowledge the sovereignty of its rebellious northern province. His official motivation was to outmaneuver suspected diplomatic efforts by the British government for emancipation of slaves in Texas, through secret negotiations with the Houston administration, Tyler secured a treaty of annexation in April 1844. Pro-Texas-annexation southern Democratic delegates denied their anti-annexation leader Martin Van Buren the nomination at their partys convention in May 1844, in alliance with pro-expansion northern Democratic colleagues, they secured the nomination of James K. Polk, who ran on a pro-Texas Manifest Destiny platform. In June 1844, the Senate, with its Whig majority, the pro-annexation Democrat Polk narrowly defeated anti-annexation Whig Henry Clay in the November 1844 presidential election. In December 1844, lame-duck President Tyler called on Congress to pass his treaty by simple majorities in each house, the Democratic-dominated House of Representatives complied with his request by passing an amended bill expanding on the pro-slavery provisions of the Tyler treaty. On March 1,1845, President Tyler signed the annexation bill, when Polk took office the next day, he encouraged Texas to accept the Tyler offer. Texas ratified the agreement with popular approval from Texans, the bill was signed by Polk on December 29,1845, accepting Texas as the 28th state of the Union. Texas formally relinquished its sovereignty to the United States on February 19,1846, first mapped by Spain in 1519, Texas was part of the vast Spanish empire seized by the Spanish Conquistadors from its indigenous people for over 300 years. When the Louisiana territory was acquired by the United States from France in 1803, the boundaries of Texas were determined within the larger geostrategic struggle to demarcate the limits of the United States extensive western lands and of Spains vast possessions in North America. Nonetheless, Texas remained an object of fervent interest to American expansionists, among them Thomas Jefferson, while a majority of southern congressmen acquiesced to the exclusion of slavery from the bulk of the Louisiana Purchase, a significant minority objected. Then-Representative John Tyler of Virginia invoked the Jeffersonian precepts of territorial and commercial growth as a goal to counter the rise of sectional differences over slavery. This doctrine would be revived during the Texas annexation controversy, colonizing empresario Stephen F. Austin managed the regional affairs of the mostly American-born population – 20% of them slaves – under the terms of the generous government land grants. A general lawlessness prevailed in the vast Texas frontier, and Mexicos civic laws went largely unenforced, Mexican authorities, perceiving that they were losing control over Texas and alarmed by the unsuccessful Fredonian Rebellion of 1826, abandoned the policy of benign rule. New restrictions were imposed in 1829–1830, outlawing slavery throughout the nation, military occupation followed, sparking local uprisings and a civil war. Texas conventions in 1832 and 1833 submitted petitions for redress of grievances to overturn the restrictions, in 1835, an army under Mexican President Santa Anna entered its territory of Texas and abolished self-government. Texans responded by declaring their independence from Mexico on March 2,1836, on April 20–21, rebel forces under Texas General Sam Houston defeated the Mexican army at the Battle of San Jacinto
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Manifest destiny
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In the 19th century, manifest destiny was a widely held belief in the United States that its settlers were destined to expand across North America. Generated by the potentialities of a new earth for building a new heaven, historians have emphasized that manifest destiny was a contested concept—pre-civil war Democrats endorsed the idea but many prominent Americans rejected it. Historian Daniel Walker Howe writes, American imperialism did not represent an American consensus, Whigs saw Americas moral mission as one of democratic example rather than one of conquest. The term was used by Democrats in the 1840s to justify the war with Mexico, but manifest destiny always limped along because of its internal limitations and the issue of slavery, says Merk. It never became a national priority, Merk concluded, From the outset Manifest Destiny—vast in program, in its sense of continentalism—was slight in support. It lacked national, sectional, or party following commensurate with its magnitude, the reason was it did not reflect the national spirit. The thesis that it embodied nationalism, found in historical writing, is backed by little real supporting evidence. There was never a set of principles defining manifest destiny, therefore it was always a general rather than a specific policy made with a motto. Andrew Jackson, who spoke of extending the area of freedom, typified the conflation of Americas potential greatness, the nations budding sense of Romantic self-identity, yet Jackson would not be the only president to elaborate on the principles underlying manifest destiny. Owing in part to the lack of a definitive narrative outlining its rationale, while many writers focused primarily upon American expansionism, be it into Mexico or across the Pacific, others saw the term as a call to example. Without an agreed upon interpretation, much less a political philosophy. This variety of possible meanings was summed up by Ernest Lee Tuveson, A vast complex of ideas, policies and they are not, as we should expect, all compatible, nor do they come from any one source. This destiny was not explicitly territorial, but OSullivan predicted that the United States would be one of a Union of many Republics sharing those values. Six years later, in 1845, OSullivan wrote another essay titled Annexation in the Democratic Review, in this article he urged the U. S. Overcoming Whig opposition, Democrats annexed Texas in 1845, OSullivans first usage of the phrase manifest destiny attracted little attention. OSullivans second use of the phrase became extremely influential, on December 27,1845, in his newspaper the New York Morning News, OSullivan addressed the ongoing boundary dispute with Britain. That is, OSullivan believed that Providence had given the United States a mission to spread republican democracy, because Britain would not spread democracy, thought OSullivan, British claims to the territory should be overruled. OSullivan believed that manifest destiny was an ideal that superseded other considerations
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Underground Railroad
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The term is also applied to the abolitionists, both black and white, free and enslaved, who aided the fugitives. Various other routes led to Mexico or overseas, an earlier escape route running south toward Florida, then a Spanish possession, existed from the late 17th century until shortly after the American Revolution. However, the now generally known as the Underground Railroad was formed in the late 1700s. One estimate suggests that by 1850,100,000 slaves had escaped via the Railroad, British North America, where slavery was prohibited, was a popular destination, as its long border gave many points of access. Most former slaves settled in Ontario, more than 30,000 people were said to have escaped there via the network during its 20-year peak period, although U. S. Census figures account for only 6,000. Numerous fugitives stories are documented in the 1872 book The Underground Railroad Records by William Still, the resulting economic impact was minuscule, but the psychological influence on slaveholders was immense. With heavy lobbying by Southern politicians, the Compromise of 1850 was passed by Congress after the Mexican–American War, because the law required sparse documentation to claim a person was a fugitive, slave catchers also kidnapped free blacks, especially children, and sold them into slavery. Southern politicians often exaggerated the number of escaped slaves and often blamed escapes on Northerners interfering with Southern property rights. The law deprived suspected slaves of the right to themselves in court. In a de facto bribe, judges were paid a fee for a decision that confirmed a suspect as a slave than for one ruling that the suspect was free. Many Northerners who might have ignored slave issues in the South were confronted by local challenges that bound them to support slavery. This was a primary grievance cited by the Union during the American Civil War, the escape network was not literally underground nor a railroad. It was figuratively underground in the sense of being an underground resistance and it was known as a railroad by way of the use of rail terminology in the code. The Underground Railroad consisted of meeting points, secret routes, transportation, and safe houses, escaped slaves would move north along the route from one way station to the next. Conductors on the railroad came from various backgrounds and included blacks, white abolitionists, former slaves. Without the presence and support of black residents, there would have been almost no chance for fugitive slaves to pass into freedom unmolested. To reduce the risk of infiltration, many associated with the Underground Railroad knew only their part of the operation. Conductors led or transported the fugitives from station to station, a conductor sometimes pretended to be a slave in order to enter a plantation
