Habeas Corpus Suspension Act (1863)
The Habeas Corpus Suspension, 12 Stat. 755, entitled An Act relating to Habeas Corpus, regulating Judicial Proceedings in Certain Cases, was an Act of Congress that authorized the president of the United States to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in response to the American Civil War and provided for the release of political prisoners. It began in the House of Representatives as an indemnity bill, introduced on December 5, 1862, releasing the president and his subordinates from any liability for having suspended habeas corpus without congressional approval; the Senate amended the House's bill, the compromise reported out of the conference committee altered it to qualify the indemnity and to suspend habeas corpus on Congress's own authority. Abraham Lincoln signed the bill into law on March 3, 1863, suspended habeas corpus under the authority it granted him six months later; the suspension was lifted with the issuance of Proclamation 148 by Andrew Johnson, the Act became inoperative with the end of the Civil War.
The exceptions to his Proclamation 148 were the States of Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, the District of Columbia, the Territories of New Mexico and Arizona. At the outbreak of the American Civil War in April 1861, Washington, D. C. was undefended, rioters in Baltimore, Maryland threatened to disrupt the reinforcement of the capital by rail, Congress was not in session. The military situation made it dangerous to call Congress into session. Abraham Lincoln, the president of the United States, therefore authorized his military commanders to suspend the writ of habeas corpus between Washington, D. C. and Philadelphia. Numerous individuals were arrested, including John Merryman and a number of Baltimore police commissioners; when Judge William Fell Giles of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland issued a writ of habeas corpus, the commander of Fort McHenry, Major W. W. Morris, wrote in reply, "At the date of issuing your writ, for two weeks previous, the city in which you live, where your court has been held, was under the control of revolutionary authorities."Merryman's lawyers appealed, in early June 1861, U.
S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, writing as the United States Circuit Court for Maryland, ruled in ex parte Merryman that Article I, section 9 of the United States Constitution reserves to Congress the power to suspend habeas corpus and thus that the president's suspension was invalid; the rest of the Supreme Court had nothing to do with Merryman, the other two Justices from the South, John Catron and James Moore Wayne acted as Unionists. The President's advisers said it was ignored; when Congress was called into special session, July 4, 1861, President Lincoln issued a message to both houses defending his various actions, including the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, arguing that it was both necessary and constitutional for him to have suspended it without Congress. Early in the session, Senator Henry Wilson introduced a joint resolution "to approve and confirm certain acts of the President of the United States, for suppressing insurrection and rebellion", including the suspension of habeas corpus.
Senator Lyman Trumbull, the Republican chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, had reservations about its imprecise wording, so the resolution opposed by anti-war Democrats, was never brought to a vote. On July 17, 1861, Trumbull introduced a bill to suppress insurrection and sedition which included a suspension of the writ of habeas corpus upon Congress's authority; that bill was not brought to a vote before Congress ended its first session on August 6, 1861 due to obstruction by Democrats, on July 11, 1862, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary recommended that it not be passed during the second session, but its proposed habeas corpus suspension section formed the basis of the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act. In September 1861 the arrests continued, including a sitting member of Congress from Maryland, Henry May, along with one third of the Maryland General Assembly, Lincoln expanded the zone within which the writ was suspended; when Lincoln's dismissal of Justice Taney's ruling was criticized in an editorial that month by a prominent Baltimore newspaper editor Frank Key Howard, Francis Scott Key's grandson and Justice Taney's grand-nephew by marriage, he was himself arrested by federal troops without trial.
He was imprisoned in Fort McHenry, which, as he noted, was the same fort where the Star Spangled Banner had been waving "o'er the land of the free" in his grandfather's song. In early 1862 Lincoln took a step back from the suspension of habeas corpus controversy. On February 14, he ordered all political prisoners released, with some exceptions and offered them amnesty for past treason or disloyalty, so long as they did not aid the Confederacy. In March 1862 Congressman Henry May, released in December 1861, introduced a bill requiring the federal government to either indict by grand jury or release all other "political prisoners" still held without habeas corpus. May's bill passed the House in summer 1862, it would be included in the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, which would require actual indictments for suspected traitors. Seven months faced with opposition to his calling up of th
Overland Campaign
The Overland Campaign known as Grant's Overland Campaign and the Wilderness Campaign, was a series of battles fought in Virginia during May and June 1864, in the American Civil War. Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, general-in-chief of all Union armies, directed the actions of the Army of the Potomac, commanded by Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, other forces against Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Although Grant suffered severe losses during the campaign, it was a strategic Union victory, it inflicted proportionately higher losses on Lee's army and maneuvered it into a siege at Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia, in just over eight weeks. Crossing the Rapidan River on May 4, 1864, Grant sought to defeat Lee's army by placing his forces between Lee and Richmond and inviting an open battle. Lee surprised Grant by attacking the larger Union army aggressively in the Battle of the Wilderness, resulting in heavy casualties on both sides. Unlike his predecessors in the Eastern Theater, Grant did not withdraw his army following this setback, but instead maneuvered to the southeast, resuming his attempt to interpose his forces between Lee and Richmond.
Lee's army was able to get into position to block this movement. At the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, Grant attacked segments of the Confederate defensive line, hoping for a breakthrough, but the only results were again heavy losses for both sides. Grant maneuvered again. Here, Lee held clever defensive positions that provided an opportunity to defeat portions of Grant's army, but illness prevented Lee from attacking in time to trap Grant; the final major battle of the campaign was waged at Cold Harbor, in which Grant gambled that Lee's army was exhausted and ordered a massive assault against strong defensive positions, resulting in disproportionately heavy Union casualties. Resorting to maneuver a final time, Grant surprised Lee by stealthily crossing the James River, threatening to capture the city of Petersburg, the loss of which would doom the Confederate capital; the resulting Siege of Petersburg led to the eventual surrender of Lee's army in April 1865 and the effective end of the Civil War.
The campaign included two long-range raids by Union cavalry under Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan. In a raid toward Richmond, legendary Confederate cavalry commander Maj. Gen. J. E. B. Stuart was mortally wounded at the Battle of Yellow Tavern. In a raid attempting to destroy the Virginia Central Railroad to the west, Sheridan was thwarted by Maj. Gen. Wade Hampton at the Battle of Trevilian Station, the largest all-cavalry battle of the war. In March 1864, Grant was summoned from the Western Theater, promoted to lieutenant general, given command of all Union armies, he chose to make his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac, although Meade retained formal command of that army. Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman succeeded Grant in command of most of the western armies. Grant and President Abraham Lincoln devised a coordinated strategy that would strike at the heart of the Confederacy from multiple directions: Grant and Benjamin Butler against Lee near Richmond, Virginia; this was the first time the Union armies would have a coordinated offensive strategy across a number of theaters.
Although previous Union campaigns in Virginia targeted the Confederate capital of Richmond as their primary objective, this time the goal was to capture Richmond by aiming for the destruction of Lee's army. Lincoln had long advocated this strategy for his generals, recognizing that the city would fall after the loss of its principal defensive army. Grant ordered Meade, "Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also." Although he hoped for a quick, decisive battle, Grant was prepared to fight a war of attrition. He meant to "hammer continuously against the armed force of the enemy and his resources until by mere attrition, if in no other way, there should be nothing left to him but an equal submission with the loyal section of our common country to the constitution and laws of the land." Both Union and Confederate casualties could be high, but the Union had greater resources to replace lost soldiers and equipment. Despite Grant's superior numbers, he had manpower challenges. Following their severe beating at the Battle of Gettysburg the previous year, the I Corps and the III Corps had been disbanded and their survivors reallocated to other corps, which damaged unit cohesion and morale.
Because he was operating on the offensive in enemy territory, Grant had to defend his bases of supply and the lines extending from them to his army in the field. Furthermore, since many of his soldiers' three-year enlistments were about to expire, they were reluctant to participate in dangerous assaults. To deal with these challenges, Grant supplemented his forces by reassigning soldiers manning the heavy artillery batteries around Washington, D. C. to infantry regiments. The Overland Campaign began as Grant's forces crossed the Rapidan River on May 4, 1864. Grant's objective was to force an engagement with Lee, outside of his Mine Run fortifications, by either drawing his forces out or turning them. Lee, displaying the audacity that characterized his generalship, moved out
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a war fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865, between the North and the South. The Civil War is the most studied and written about episode in U. S. history. As a result of the long-standing controversy over the enslavement of black people, war broke out in April 1861 when secessionist forces attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina shortly after Abraham Lincoln had been inaugurated as the President of the United States; the loyalists of the Union in the North proclaimed support for the Constitution. They faced secessionists of the Confederate States in the South, who advocated for states' rights to uphold slavery. Among the 34 U. S. states in February 1861, secessionist partisans in seven Southern slave states declared state secessions from the country and unveiled their defiant formation of a Confederate States of America in rebellion against the U. S. Constitutional government; the Confederacy grew to control over half the territory in eleven states, it claimed the additional states of Kentucky and Missouri by assertions from exiled native secessionists without territory or population.
These were given full representation in the Confederate Congress throughout the Civil War. The two remaining slave holding states of Delaware and Maryland were invited to join the Confederacy, but nothing substantial developed; the Confederate States was never diplomatically recognized by the government of the United States or by that of any foreign country. The states that remained loyal to the U. S. were known as the Union. The Union and the Confederacy raised volunteer and conscription armies that fought in the South over the course of four years. Intense combat left 620,000 to 750,000 people dead, more than the number of U. S. military deaths in all other wars combined. The war ended when General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at the Battle of Appomattox Court House. Confederate generals throughout the southern states followed suit. Much of the South's infrastructure was destroyed the transportation systems; the Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished, four million black slaves were freed.
During the Reconstruction Era that followed the war, national unity was restored, the national government expanded its power, civil rights were granted to freed black slaves through amendments to the Constitution and federal legislation. In the 1860 presidential election, led by Abraham Lincoln, supported banning slavery in all the U. S. territories. The Southern states viewed this as a violation of their constitutional rights and as the first step in a grander Republican plan to abolish slavery; the three pro-Union candidates together received an overwhelming 82% majority of the votes cast nationally: Republican Lincoln's votes centered in the north, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas' votes were distributed nationally and Constitutional Unionist John Bell's votes centered in Tennessee and Virginia; the Republican Party, dominant in the North, secured a plurality of the popular votes and a majority of the electoral votes nationally. He was the first Republican Party candidate to win the presidency.
However, before his inauguration, seven slave states with cotton-based economies declared secession and formed the Confederacy. The first six to declare secession had the highest proportions of slaves in their populations, with an average of 49 percent. Of those states whose legislatures resolved for secession, the first seven voted with split majorities for unionist candidates Douglas and Bell, or with sizable minorities for those unionists. 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. Lincoln's March 4, 1861, inaugural address declared that his administration would not initiate a civil war. Speaking directly to the "Southern States", he attempted to calm their fears of any threats to slavery, reaffirming, "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 lawful right to do so, I have no inclination to do so." After Confederate forces seized numerous federal forts within territory claimed by the Confederacy, efforts at compromise failed and both sides prepared for war. The Confederates assumed that European countries were so dependent on "King Cotton" that they would intervene, but none did, none recognized the new Confederate States of America. Hostilities began on April 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 during 1861–1862. In September 1862, 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 much of its western armies, seized New Orleans; the successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River. In 1863, Robert E. Lee's Confederate incursion north ended at the Battle of Gettysburg.
Western successes led to Ulysses S. Grant's command of all Union armies in 1864. Inflicting an ever-tightening naval blockade of Confederate ports, the Union marshaled the resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions, leading to the fall of Atlanta to William T. Sherman and his march to th
Homestead Acts
The Homestead Acts were several laws in the United States by which an applicant could acquire ownership of government land or the public domain called a homestead. In all, more than 160 million acres of public land, or nearly 10 percent of the total area of the United States, was given away free to 1.6 million homesteaders. An extension of the homestead principle in law, the Homestead Acts were an expression of the Free Soil policy of Northerners who wanted individual farmers to own and operate their own farms, as opposed to Southern slave-owners who wanted to buy up large tracts of land and use slave labor, thereby shutting out free white farmers; the first of the acts, the Homestead Act of 1862, opened up millions of acres. Any adult who had never taken up arms against the Federal government of the United States could apply. Women and immigrants who had applied for citizenship were eligible; the 1866 Act explicitly included black Americans and encouraged them to participate, but rampant discrimination slowed black gains.
Historian Michael Lanza argues that while the 1866 law pack was not as beneficial as it might have been, it was part of the reason that by 1900 one fourth of all Southern black farmers owned their own farms. Several additional laws were enacted in the latter half of the early 20th centuries; the Southern Homestead Act of 1866 sought to address land ownership inequalities in the south during Reconstruction. The Timber Culture Act of 1873 granted land to a claimant, required to plant trees—the tract could be added to an existing homestead claim and had no residency requirement; the Kinkaid Amendment of 1904 granted a full section—640 acres –to new homesteaders settling in western Nebraska. An amendment to the Homestead Act of 1862, the Enlarged Homestead Act, was passed in 1909 and doubled the allotted acreage from 160 to 320 acres. Another amended act, the national Stock-Raising Homestead Act, was passed in 1916 and again increased the land involved, this time to 640 acres. Land-grant laws similar to the Homestead Acts had been proposed by northern Republicans before the Civil War, but had been blocked in Congress by southern Democrats who wanted western lands open for purchase by slave-owners.
The Homestead Act of 1860 did pass in Congress, but it was vetoed by President James Buchanan, a Democrat. After the Southern states seceded from the Union in 1861, the bill passed and was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln. Daniel Freeman became the first person to file a claim under the new act. Between 1862 and 1934, the federal government granted 1.6 million homesteads and distributed 270,000,000 acres of federal land for private ownership. This was a total of 10% of all land in the United States. Homesteading was discontinued in 1976, except in Alaska, where it continued until 1986. About 40% of the applicants who started the process were able to complete it and obtain title to their homesteaded land after paying a small fee in cash; the Donation Land Claim Act allowed settlers to claim land in the Oregon Territory including the modern states of Washington, Oregon and parts of Wyoming. Settlers were able to claim 320 or 640 acres of land for free between 1850 and 1854, at a cost of $1.25 per acres until the law expired in 1855.
The "yeoman farmer" ideal of Jeffersonian democracy was still a powerful influence in American politics during the 1840–1850s, with many politicians believing a homestead act would help increase the number of "virtuous yeomen". The Free Soil Party of 1848–52, the new Republican Party after 1854, demanded that the new lands opening up in the west be made available to independent farmers, rather than wealthy planters who would develop it with the use of slaves forcing the yeomen farmers onto marginal lands. Southern Democrats had continually fought previous homestead law proposals, as they feared free land would attract European immigrants and poor Southern whites to the west. After the South seceded and their delegates left Congress in 1861, the Republicans and other supporters from the upper South passed a homestead act; the intent of the first Homestead Act, passed in 1862, was to liberalize the homesteading requirements of the Preemption Act of 1841. Its leading advocates were George Henry Evans and Horace Greeley.
The homestead was an area of public land in the West granted to any US citizen willing to settle on and farm the land. The law required a three-step procedure: file an application, improve the land, file for the patent. Any citizen who had never taken up arms against the U. S. government and was at least 21 years old or the head of a household, could file an application to claim a federal land grant. Women were eligible; the occupant had to reside on the land for five years, show evidence of having made improvements. The process had to be complete within seven years. Enacted to allow poor tenant farmers and sharecroppers in the south become land owners in the southern United States during Reconstruction, it was not successful, as the low prices and fees were too much for the applicants to afford. The Timber Culture Act granted up to 160 acres of land to a homesteader who would plant at least 40 acres of trees over a period of several years; this quarter-section could be added to an existing homestead claim, offering a total of 320 acres to a settler.
This offered a cheap plot of land to homesteaders. Recognizing that the Sandhills of north-central Nebraska, required
United States Department of Agriculture
The United States Department of Agriculture known as the Agriculture Department, is the U. S. federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming and food. It aims to meet the needs of farmers and ranchers, promote agricultural trade and production, work to assure food safety, protect natural resources, foster rural communities and end hunger in the United States and internationally. 80% of the USDA's $141 billion budget goes to the Food and Nutrition Service program. The largest component of the FNS budget is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the cornerstone of USDA's nutrition assistance; the current Secretary of Agriculture is Sonny Perdue. Many of the programs concerned with the distribution of food and nutrition to people of America and providing nourishment as well as nutrition education to those in need are run and operated under the USDA Food and Nutrition Service. Activities in this program include the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides healthy food to over 40 million low-income and homeless people each month.
USDA is a member of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, where it is committed to working with other agencies to ensure these mainstream benefits are accessed by those experiencing homelessness. The USDA is concerned with assisting farmers and food producers with the sale of crops and food on both the domestic and world markets, it plays a role in overseas aid programs by providing surplus foods to developing countries. This aid can go through USAID, foreign governments, international bodies such as World Food Program, or approved nonprofits; the Agricultural Act of 1949, section 416 and Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954 known as Food for Peace, provides the legal basis of such actions. The USDA is a partner of the World Cocoa Foundation. Early in its history, the economy of the United States was agrarian. Officials in the federal government had long sought new and improved varieties of seeds and animals for import into the United States. In 1837 Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, a Yale-educated attorney interested in improving agriculture, became Commissioner of Patents, a position within the Department of State.
He began collecting and distributing new varieties of seeds and plants through members of the Congress and agricultural societies. In 1839, Congress established the Agricultural Division within the Patent Office and allotted $1,000 for "the collection of agricultural statistics and other agricultural purposes." Ellsworth's interest in aiding agriculture was evident in his annual reports that called for a public depository to preserve and distribute the new seeds and plants, a clerk to collect agricultural statistics, statewide reports about crops in different regions, the application of chemistry to agriculture. Ellsworth was called the "Father of the Department of Agriculture."In 1849, the Patent Office was transferred to the newly created Department of the Interior. In the ensuing years, agitation for a separate bureau of agriculture within the department or a separate department devoted to agriculture kept recurring. On May 15, 1862, Abraham Lincoln established the independent Department of Agriculture to be headed by a commissioner without Cabinet status, the agriculturalist Isaac Newton was appointed to be the first such commissioner.
Lincoln called it the "people's department." In 1868, the Department moved into the new Department of Agriculture Building in Washington, D. C. designed by famed DC architect Adolf Cluss. Located on Reservation No.2 on the National Mall between 12th Street and 14th SW, the Department had offices for its staff and the entire width of the Mall up to B Street NW to plant and experiment with plants. In the 1880s, varied advocacy groups were lobbying for Cabinet representation. Business interests sought a Department of Commerce and Industry, farmers tried to raise the Department of Agriculture to Cabinet rank. In 1887, the House of Representatives and Senate passed bills giving Cabinet status to the Department of Agriculture and Labor, but the bill was defeated in conference committee after farm interests objected to the addition of labor. On February 9, 1889, President Grover Cleveland signed a bill into law elevating the Department of Agriculture to Cabinet level. In 1887, the Hatch Act provided for the federal funding of agricultural experiment stations in each state.
The Smith-Lever Act of 1914 funded cooperative extension services in each state to teach agriculture, home economics, other subjects to the public. With these and similar provisions, the USDA reached out to every county of every state. During the Great Depression, farming remained a common way of life for millions of Americans; the Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Home Economics, established in 1923, published shopping advice and recipes to stretch family budgets and make food go farther. USDA helped ensure that food continued to be produced and distributed to those who needed it, assisted with loans for small landowners, contributed to the education of the rural youth, it was revealed on August 27th, 2018 that the U. S. Department of Agriculture would be providing U. S. farmers with a farm aid package, which will total $4.7 billion in direct payments to American farmers. This package is meant to offset the losses farmers are expected to incur from retaliatory tariffs placed on American exports during the Trump tariffs.
The Department of Agriculture was authorized a budget for Fiscal Year 2015 of $139.7 billion. The budget authorization is broken down as follows: Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service Animal Damage Control (
Abraham Lincoln in the Black Hawk War
Abraham Lincoln served as a volunteer in the Illinois Militia April 21, 1832 – July 10, 1832, during the Black Hawk War. Lincoln never was elected captain of his first company, he was present in the aftermath of two of the war's battles, where he helped to bury the militia dead. He was mustered in and out of service during the war, going from captain to private and finishing his service in an independent spy company commanded by Captain Jacob Early. Lincoln's service had a lasting impression on him, he related tales about it in life with modesty and a bit of humor. Through his service he was able to forge lasting political connections. In addition, he received a land grant from the U. S. government for his military service during the war. Though Lincoln had no military experience when he assumed command of his company, he is characterized as an able and competent leader. Angered by the loss of his birthplace via prior disputed treaties, against the best interests of other tribes affected, Black Hawk led a number of incursions across the Mississippi River beginning in 1830.
Each time, he was persuaded to return west without bloodshed. In April 1832, encouraged by promises of alliances with other tribes and the British, he again moved his "British Band" into Illinois. On April 5, 1832, Black Hawk and around 1,000 warriors and civilians recrossed the Mississippi River into Illinois in an attempt to reclaim their land. About half of Black Hawk's band were combatants and the rest were a combination of women and elderly; the band consisted of Sauk, some Potawatomi, some Kickapoo. Black Hawk's reasons for crossing into Illinois were to reclaim lost lands, create a confederacy of Native Americans to stand against white settlement. Promises of aid from other Illinois tribes were made to the British Band, Black Hawk believed that promises of assistance were made by the British in Canada. Despite this, Black Hawk found no allies, he attempted to return to Iowa, but ensuing events led to the Battle of Stillman's Run. A number of other engagements followed, the state militias of Wisconsin and Illinois were mobilized to hunt down Black Hawk's band.
The conflict became known as the Black Hawk War. At the time of Black Hawk's incursion into Illinois, Lincoln was living in New Salem, where he had lived for two years. Prior to the Black Hawk War, in March 1832, Lincoln announced his candidacy for the Illinois House of Representatives, but the election was several months away. One month he responded to the governor's call for volunteer militia. On April 21, 1832, Lincoln and the other volunteers gathered at the property of Dallas Scott. Lincoln rode a horse from New Salem to Richland Creek, where neighbors had gathered to form a company of volunteer militia near Beardstown, Illinois; the men were sworn in and they began the process of choosing a company commander. The men voted for a captain, between Lincoln and William Kirkpatrick, Lincoln received three-fourths of the votes and was elected captain. Many years Lincoln said this election as militia captain was "a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since."Lincoln was commissioned as a captain in the 31st Regiment of Militia of Sangamon County, 1st Division and put in charge of a rifle company of the 4th Regiment of Mounted Volunteers within Samuel Whiteside's brigade by April 30.
The men spent time in Beardstown, where they drew weapons. Other downtime in Beardstown was occupied by inter-company rivalry. An incident occurred on April 22. Lincoln and his challenger wrestled for the spot and Lincoln was beaten before a crowd of fellow soldiers. After the wrestling match and the other commanders spent April 23–26 conducting light drills and drawing supplies. On April 28, Lincoln's company was enrolled into state service by Colonel John J. Hardin, Lincoln drew further supplies; the volunteers marched to Rushville, a distance of 10 miles, on April 30, 1832. Following their arrival in Rushville, the troops continued marching for several days toward the mouth of the Rock River. Much of the rest of early May was spent resupplying. General Samuel Whiteside, the brigade commander, moved the volunteers to the Prophet's Village, which they burned on May 11, continued the men toward Dixon's Ferry, another 40 miles upstream; the men reached Dixon's Ferry on May 12, the next day, Isaiah Stillman and David Bailey led their troops toward Old Man's Creek, where it was rumored that Black Hawk and his men were encamped.
Lincoln engaged in no combat during the Black Hawk War, as Lincoln's own recollections of this time attest. He did, see scalped corpses and witness the results of the war's atrocities. Lincoln was 23 years old at the time of the Black Hawk War, his experience in the volunteer militia was his only military experience prior to becoming president. Various sources, many compiled at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, document the movements of Lincoln's company after the outbreak of hostilities at the Battle of Stillman's Run. On May 15, 1832 Lincoln's company set out under the command of Whiteside and reached the site of Stillman's Run by sunset. According to letters from Whiteside to militia commander Henry Atkinson, the soldiers, including Lincoln, arrived to find militia men dead and mangled. In a 2006 article, author Scott Dyer asserted that Whiteside's men, including Captain Lincoln, "paraded" the area the morning after, buried the dead from Stillman's Run, their move
Thanksgiving (United States)
Thanksgiving is a national holiday in the United States, celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. It originated as a harvest festival. Thanksgiving has been celebrated nationally on and off since 1789, with a proclamation by George Washington after a request by Congress. Thomas Jefferson chose not to observe the holiday, its celebration was intermittent until the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, when Thanksgiving became a federal holiday in 1863, during the American Civil War. Lincoln proclaimed a national day of "Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens," to be celebrated on the last Thursday in November. Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the date was changed to the fourth Thursday in November, an innovation that endures to this day. Together with Christmas and the New Year, Thanksgiving is a part of the broader fall–winter holiday season in the U. S; the event that Americans call the "First Thanksgiving" was celebrated by the Pilgrims after their first harvest in the New World in October 1621.
This feast lasted three days, and—as accounted by attendee Edward Winslow—it was attended by 90 Native Americans and 53 Pilgrims. The New England colonists were accustomed to celebrating "thanksgivings"—days of prayer thanking God for blessings such as military victory or the end of a drought. Setting aside time to give thanks for one's blessings, along with holding feasts to celebrate a harvest, are both practices that long predate the European settlement of North America; the first documented thanksgiving services in territory belonging to the United States were conducted by Spaniards and the French in the 16th century. Wisdom practices such as expressing gratitude and giving away, are integral to many indigenous cultures and communities.. Thanksgiving services were routine in what became the Commonwealth of Virginia as early as 1607, with the first permanent settlement of Jamestown, Virginia holding a thanksgiving in 1610. In 1619, 38 English settlers arrived at Berkeley Hundred in Virginia.
The group's London Company charter required "that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned... in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God." Three years after the Indian massacre of 1622, the Berkeley Hundred site and other outlying locations were abandoned and colonists moved their celebration to Jamestown and other more secure spots. The most prominent historic thanksgiving event in American popular culture is the 1621 celebration at the Plymouth Plantation, where the settlers held a harvest feast after a successful growing season. Autumn or early winter feasts continued sporadically in years, first as an impromptu religious observance and as a civil tradition; the Plymouth settlers, known as Pilgrims, had settled in land abandoned when all but one of the Patuxet Indians died in a plague. After a harsh winter killed half of the Plymouth settlers, the last surviving Patuxet, came in at the request of Samoset, the first native American to encounter the Pilgrims.
Squanto taught the Pilgrims how to catch eel and grow corn and served as an interpreter for them until he too succumbed to plague a year later. The Wampanoag leader Massasoit gave food to the colonists during the first winter when supplies brought from England were insufficient; the Pilgrims celebrated at Plymouth for three days after their first harvest in 1621. The exact time is unknown, but James Baker, the Plimoth Plantation vice president of research, stated in 1996, "The event occurred between Sept. 21 and Nov. 11, 1621, with the most time being around Michaelmas, the traditional time." Seventeenth-century accounts do not identify this as a Thanksgiving observance, rather it followed the harvest. It included 50 people who were on 90 Native Americans; the feast was cooked by the four adult Pilgrim women who survived their first winter in the New World, along with young daughters and male and female servants. Two colonists gave personal accounts of the 1621 feast in Plymouth; the Pilgrims, most of whom were Separatists, are not to be confused with Puritans, who established their own Massachusetts Bay Colony on the Shawmut Peninsula in 1630.
Both groups were strict Calvinists. Puritans wished to remain in the Anglican Church and reform it, while the Pilgrims wanted complete separation from the church. William Bradford, in Of Plymouth Plantation wrote: They began now to gather in the small harvest they had, to fit up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength and had all things in good plenty. For as some were thus employed in affairs abroad, others were exercised in fishing, about cod and bass and other fish, of which they took good store, of which every family had their portion. All the summer there was no want, and besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides, they had about a peck a meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to the proportion. Which made many afterwards write so of their plenty here to their friends in England, which were not feigned but true reports. Edward Winslow, in Mourt's Relation wrote: Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a specia