Reconstruction era
The Reconstruction era was the period from 1863 to 1877 in American history. It was a significant chapter in the history of American civil rights; the term has two applications: the first applies to the complete history of the entire country from 1865 to 1877 following the American Civil War. Reconstruction ended the remnants of Confederate secession and ended slavery, making the newly-free slaves citizens with civil rights ostensibly guaranteed by three new Constitutional amendments. Three visions of Civil War memory appeared during Reconstruction: the reconciliationist vision, rooted in coping with the death and devastation the war had brought. Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson both took moderate positions designed to bring the South back into the Union as as possible, while Radical Republicans in Congress sought stronger measures to upgrade the rights of African Americans, including the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, while curtailing the rights of former Confederates, such as through the provisions of the Wade–Davis Bill.
Johnson, a former Tennessee Senator, former slave owner, the most prominent Southerner to oppose the Confederacy, followed a lenient policy toward ex-Confederates. Lincoln's last speeches show that he was leaning toward supporting the enfranchisement of all freedmen, whereas Johnson was opposed to this. Johnson's interpretations of Lincoln's policies prevailed until the Congressional elections of 1866; those elections followed outbreaks of violence against blacks in the former rebel states, including the Memphis riots of 1866 and the New Orleans riot that same year. The subsequent 1866 election gave Republicans a majority in Congress, enabling them to pass the 14th Amendment, take control of Reconstruction policy, remove former Confederates from power, enfranchise the freedmen. A Republican coalition came to power in nearly all the southern states and set out to transform the society by setting up a free labor economy, using the U. S. Army and the Freedmen's Bureau; the Bureau protected the legal rights of freedmen, negotiated labor contracts, set up schools and churches for them.
Thousands of Northerners came south as missionaries, teachers and politicians. Hostile whites began referring to these politicians as "carpetbaggers". In early 1866, Congress passed the Freedmen's Bureau and Civil Rights Bills and sent them to Johnson for his signature; the first bill extended the life of the bureau established as a temporary organization charged with assisting refugees and freed slaves, while the second defined all persons born in the United States as national citizens with equality before the law. After Johnson vetoed the bills, Congress overrode his vetos, making the Civil Rights Act the first major bill in the history of the United States to become law through an override of a presidential veto; the Radicals in the House of Representatives, frustrated by Johnson's opposition to Congressional Reconstruction, filed impeachment charges. The action failed by one vote in the Senate; the new national Reconstruction laws – in particular laws requiring suffrage for freedmen – incensed white supremacists in the South, giving rise to the Ku Klux Klan.
During 1867-69 the Klan murdered Republicans and outspoken freedmen in the South, including Arkansas Congressman James M. Hinds. Elected in 1868, Republican President Ulysses S. Grant supported Congressional Reconstruction and enforced the protection of African Americans in the South through the use of the Enforcement Acts passed by Congress. Grant used the Enforcement Acts to combat the Ku Klux Klan, wiped out, although a new incarnation of the Klan would again come to national prominence in the 1920s. President Grant was unable to resolve the escalating tensions inside the Republican Party between the Northerners on the one hand, those Republicans hailing from the South on the other. Meanwhile, "redeemers", self-styled conservatives in close cooperation with a faction of the Democratic Party opposed Reconstruction, they alleged widespread corruption by the "carpetbaggers", excessive state spending, ruinous taxes. Meanwhile, public support for Reconstruction policies, requiring continued supervision of the South, faded in the North after the Democrats, who opposed Reconstruction, regained control of the House of Representatives in 1874.
In 1877, as part of a Congressional bargain to elect Republican Rutherford B. Hayes as president following the disputed 1876 presidential election, U. S. Army troops were withdrawn from the three states; this marked the end of Reconstruction. Historian Eric Foner argues: What remains certain is that Reconstruction failed, that for blacks its failure was a disaster whose magnitude cannot be obscured by the genuine accomplishments that did endure. In different states Reconstruction ended at different times. In recent decades most historians follow Foner in dating the Reconstruction of the South as starting in 1863 rather than 1865; the usual ending for Reconstruction has always been 1877. Reconstruction policies were debated in the North when the
1860 United States presidential election
The 1860 United States presidential election was the nineteenth quadrennial presidential election to select the President and Vice President of the United States. The election was held on Tuesday, November 6, 1860. In a four-way contest, the Republican Party ticket of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin emerged triumphant; the election of Lincoln served as the primary catalyst of the American Civil War. The United States had become divided during the 1850s over sectional disagreements regarding the extension of slavery into the territories. Incumbent President James Buchanan, like his predecessor Franklin Pierce, was a northern Democrat with sympathies for the South. During the mid-to-late 1850s, the anti-slavery Republican Party became a major political force in the wake of the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the Supreme Court's decision in the 1857 case of Dred Scott v. Sandford. By 1860, the Republican Party had replaced the defunct Whig Party as the major opposition to the Democrats. A group of former Whigs and Know Nothings formed the Constitutional Union Party, which sought to avoid secession by pushing aside the issue of slavery.
The 1860 Republican National Convention nominated Lincoln, a moderate former Congressman from Illinois, as its standard-bearer. The Republican Party platform promised not to interfere with slavery in the states, but opposed the further extension of slavery into the territories; the first 1860 Democratic National Convention adjourned without agreeing on a nominee, but a second convention nominated Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois for president. Douglas's support for the concept of popular sovereignty, which called for each individual territory to decide on the status of slavery, alienated many Southern Democrats; the Southern Democrats, with the support of President Buchanan, held their own convention and nominated Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky for president; the 1860 Constitutional Union Convention nominated a ticket led by former Senator John Bell of Tennessee. Despite minimal support in the South, Lincoln won a plurality of the popular vote and a majority of the electoral vote.
The divisions among the Republicans' opponents were not in themselves decisive in ensuring the Republican capture of the White House, as Lincoln received absolute majorities in states that combined for a majority of the electoral votes. Lincoln's main opponent in the North was Douglas, who finished second in several states but only won the slave state of Missouri and three electors from the free state of New Jersey. Bell won three Southern states; the election of Lincoln led to the secession of several states in the South, the Civil War soon began, with the Battle of Fort Sumter. The election was the first of six consecutive victories for the Republican Party; the 1860 presidential election conventions were unusually tumultuous, due in particular to a split in the Democratic Party that led to rival conventions. Northern Democratic candidates: Stephen Douglas, senator from Illinois James Guthrie, former treasury secretary from Kentucky Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter, senator from Virginia Joseph Lane, senator from Oregon Daniel S. Dickinson, former senator from New York Andrew Johnson, senator from Tennessee At the Democratic National Convention held in Institute Hall in Charleston, South Carolina, in April 1860, 51 Southern Democrats walked out over a platform dispute.
The extreme pro-slavery "Fire-Eater" William Lowndes Yancey and the Alabama delegation first left the hall, followed by the delegates of Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, three of the four delegates from Arkansas, one of the three delegates from Delaware. Six candidates were nominated: Stephen A. Douglas from Illinois, James Guthrie from Kentucky, Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter from Virginia, Joseph Lane from Oregon, Daniel S. Dickinson from New York, Andrew Johnson from Tennessee. Three other candidates, Isaac Toucey from Connecticut, James Pearce from Maryland, Jefferson Davis from Mississippi received votes. Douglas, a moderate on the slavery issue who favored "popular sovereignty", was ahead on the first ballot, but needed 56.5 more votes to secure the nomination. On the 57th ballot, Douglas was 51.5 votes short of the nomination. In desperation, the delegates agreed on May 3 to adjourn the convention; the Democrats convened again at the Front Street Theater in Baltimore, Maryland, on June 18.
This time, 110 Southern delegates walked out when the convention would not adopt a resolution supporting extending slavery into territories whose voters did not want it. Some considered Horatio Seymour a compromise candidate for the National Democratic nomination at the reconvening convention in Baltimore. Seymour wrote a letter to the editor of his local newspaper declaring unreservedly that he was not a candidate for either spot on the ticket. After two ballots, the remaining Democrats nominated Stephen A. Douglas from Illinois for president. Benjamin Fitzpatrick from Alabama was nominated for vice president; that nomination went instead to Herschel Vespasian Johnson from Georgia. Southern Democratic candidates: John C. Breckinridge, Vice President of the United States Daniel S. Dickinson, former senator from New York Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter, senator from Virginia Joseph Lane, senator from Oregon Jefferson Davis, senator from Mississippi The Charleston bolters reconvened in Richmond, Virginia on June 11.
When the Democrats reconvened in Baltimore, they rejoined. When the convention seated two replacement delegations on June 18, they bolted again, now accompanied
1860 Republican National Convention
The 1860 Republican National Convention known as the 2nd Republican National Convention, was a nominating convention of the Republican Party of the United States, held in Chicago, from May 16 to 18, 1860. The gathering nominated former U. S. Representative Abraham Lincoln of Illinois for President of the United States and Senator Hannibal Hamlin of Maine for Vice President. Lincoln's nomination was a surprise, as the favorite before the convention had been former Governor of New York and U. S. Senator William H. Seward. Lincoln's campaign manager, David Davis, is credited for Lincoln's victory over Thurlow Weed, Seward's campaign manager. Lincoln-Hamlin went on to defeat three other major tickets that year, including Democratic nominee Stephen A. Douglas, U. S. Senator from Illinois. By 1860 the dissolution of the Whig Party in America had become an accomplished fact, with establishment Whig politicians, former Free Soilers, a certain number of anti-Catholic populists from the Know Nothing movement flocking to the banner of the fledgling anti-slavery Republican Party.
While the Republican Presidential effort on behalf of the 43-year-old Colonel John C. Frémont in the 1856 election had met with failure, party gains were made throughout the Northern United States as the sectional crisis over slavery intensified. Party leaders sought to hold their 1860 nominating convention in the burgeoning Middle Western trade center of Chicago a city of some 110,000 people; the city had no sufficiently large meeting hall, so an appropriation was made for a temporary wood-frame assembly hall – known as the "Wigwam" – to seat ten thousand delegates and observers. The designed and constructed building proved well fit for the purpose, featuring excellent lines of sight and stellar acoustics, allowing an ordinary speaker to be heard throughout the room; the Convention commanded the interest and attention of a multitude of curious citizens who crowded the "Wigwam" to the rafters. Delegations were seated by state and the gathering was devoid of Southern participation, with no delegations attending from the slave states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida.
Delegation voting strength was loosely based upon the size of each state's congressional delegation, subject to some modification by the Credentials Committee, with the Northeastern delegations of New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey constituting the largest regional block, surpassing the Midwestern states of Ohio, Indiana and Iowa. Some 86 votes were apportioned to the six states of New England. Slave and border states with substantial delegations under the rules included Kentucky and Missouri; the total of all credentialed delegate votes was 466. With the convention called to order on May 16, former U. S. Representative David Wilmot of Pennsylvania was elected temporary chairman of the gathering, he had been the author in 1848 of the Wilmot Proviso which would have banned slavery from new states incorporated into the Union. Upon his election, Wilmot delivered the keynote speech to the Convention, in which he declared that: A great sectional and aristocratic party, or interest, has for years dominated with a high hand over the political affairs of this country.
That interest has wrested, is now wresting, all the great powers of this government to the one object of the extension and nationalization of slavery. It is our purpose, gentlemen, it is the mission of the Republican Party and the basis of its organization, to resist this policy of a sectional interest.... It is our purpose and our policy to resist these new constitutional dogmas that slavery exists by virtue of the constitution wherever the banner of the Union floats. Organizational tasks filled the rest of the first day's activities, including the appointment of a Credentials Committee and a Resolutions Committee. There were no contested seats although a delegation purporting to represent the state of Texas was ruled ineligible by the Credentials Committee. A Platform Committee was named, including one delegate from every state and territory in attendance; this committee began its work at once and completed its task with a report on the evening of the second day, May 17. The reading of the platform, as drafted by the Platform Committee chaired by Judge William Jessup of Pennsylvania, was received with stormy applause and an immediate move followed to adopt the document unanimously and without amendments.
An effort followed to amend the platform after adoption with insertion of famous language from the Declaration of Independence that "All men are created equal. This Amendment was rejected by the convention, prompting a walkout by its proposer, long time Ohio Congressman Joshua Reed Giddings; the matter was hastily reconsidered by the Convention, with the addition of the amendment the disgruntled Mr. Giddings returned to his seat, crisis resolved; the 1860 Republican platform consisted of 17 declarations of principle, of which 10 dealt directly with the issues of free soil principles, the Fugitive Slave Act, the preservation of the Union, while the remaining 7 dealing with other issues. Clauses 12 through 16 of the platform called for a protective tariff, enactment of the Homestead Act, freedom of immigration into the United States and full rights to all immigrant citizens, internal improvements, the construction of a Pacific railroad. In addition to the preservation of the Union, all five of these additional promises were enacted by the Thirty-seventh Congress and implemented by Abraham Lincoln or the presidents who succ
Gettysburg Address
The Gettysburg Address is a speech that U. S. President Abraham Lincoln delivered during the American Civil War at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy at the Battle of Gettysburg, it is one of the best-known speeches in American history. Although not the day's primary speech, Lincoln's crafted address came to be seen as one of the greatest and most influential statements of American national purpose. In just 271 words, beginning with the now iconic phrase "Four score and seven years ago," referring to the signing of the Declaration of Independence eighty-seven years earlier, Lincoln described the USA as a nation "conceived in Liberty, dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," and represented the Civil War as a test that would decide whether such a nation, the Union sundered by the secession crisis, could endure.
He extolled the sacrifices of those who died at Gettysburg in defense of those principles, exhorted his listeners to resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Despite the speech's prominent place in the history and popular culture of the United States, its exact wording is disputed; the five known manuscripts of the Gettysburg Address in Lincoln's hand differ in a number of details, differ from contemporary newspaper reprints of the speech. Neither is it clear. Modern scholarship locates the speakers' platform 40 yards away from the traditional site in Soldiers' National Cemetery at the Soldiers' National Monument, which means that it stood within the private, adjacent Evergreen Cemetery. Following the Battle of Gettysburg on July 1–3, 1863, the removal of the fallen Union soldiers from the Gettysburg Battlefield graves and their reburial in graves at the National Cemetery at Gettysburg began on October 17.
In inviting President Lincoln to the ceremonies, David Wills, of the committee for the November 19 Consecration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, wrote, "It is the desire that, after the Oration, you, as Chief Executive of the nation, formally set apart these grounds to their sacred use by a few appropriate remarks."On the train trip from Washington, D. C. to Gettysburg on November 18, Lincoln was accompanied by three members of his Cabinet, William Seward, John Usher and Montgomery Blair, several foreign officials, his secretary John Nicolay, his assistant secretary, John Hay. During the trip Lincoln remarked to Hay. Hay noted that during the speech Lincoln's face had "a ghastly color" and that he was "sad, mournful haggard." After the speech, when Lincoln boarded the 6:30 pm train for Washington, D. C. he was weak, with a severe headache. A protracted illness followed, it thus seems likely that Lincoln was in the prodromal period of smallpox when he delivered the Gettysburg address. The program organized for that day by Wills and his committee included: Music, by Birgfeld's Band Prayer, by Reverend T. H. Stockton, D.
D. Music, by the Marine Band, directed by Francis Scala Oration, by Hon. Edward Everett Music, Hymn by B. B. French, Esq. music by Wilson G Horner, sung by Baltimore Glee Club Dedicatory Remarks, by the President of the United States Dirge, sung by Choir selected for the occasion Benediction, by Reverend H. L. Baugher, D. D. While it is Lincoln's short speech that has gone down in history as one of the finest examples of English public oratory, it was Everett's two-hour oration, slated to be the "Gettysburg address" that day, his now seldom-read 13,607-word oration began: Standing beneath this serene sky, overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Alleghenies dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet, it is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of God and Nature. But the duty to which you have called me must be performed, and ended two hours with: But they, I am sure, will join us in saying, as we bid farewell to the dust of these martyr-heroes, that wheresoever throughout the civilized world the accounts of this great warfare are read, down to the latest period of recorded time, in the glorious annals of our common country, there will be no brighter page than that which relates the Battles of Gettysburg.
Lengthy dedication addresses like Everett's were common at cemeteries in this era. The tradition began in 1831 when Justice Joseph Story delivered the dedication address at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts; those addresses linked cemeteries to the mission of Union. Lincoln's address followed the oration by Edward Everett, who subsequently included a copy of the Gettysburg Address in his 1864 book about the event (Address of the Hon. Edward Everett At the Consecration of the National Cemetery At Gettysburg, 19th November 1863, with the Dedicatory Speech of President Lincoln, the Other Exercises of the Occasion.
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson was the 17th president of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. Johnson assumed the presidency as he was vice president of the United States at the time of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. A Democrat who ran with Lincoln on the National Union ticket, Johnson came to office as the Civil War concluded, he favored quick restoration of the seceded states to the Union. His plans did not give protection to the former slaves, he was acquitted in the Senate by one vote. Johnson's main accomplishment as president is the Alaska purchase. Johnson was born in poverty in Raleigh, North Carolina, never attended school. Apprenticed as a tailor, he worked in several frontier towns before settling in Greeneville, Tennessee, he served as alderman and mayor there before being elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1835. After brief service in the Tennessee Senate, Johnson was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives in 1843, where he served five two-year terms, he became Governor of Tennessee for four years, was elected by the legislature to the U.
S. Senate in 1857. In his congressional service, he sought passage of the Homestead Bill, enacted soon after he left his Senate seat in 1862; as Southern slave states, including Tennessee, seceded to form the Confederate States of America, Johnson remained with the Union. He was the only sitting senator from a Confederate state who did not resign his seat upon learning of his state's secession. In 1862, Lincoln appointed him as military governor of Tennessee. In 1864, Johnson, as a War Democrat and Southern Unionist, was a logical choice as running mate for Lincoln, who wished to send a message of national unity in his reelection campaign; when Johnson was sworn in as vice president in March 1865, he gave a rambling speech, after which he secluded himself to avoid public ridicule. Six weeks the assassination of Lincoln made him president. Johnson implemented his own form of Presidential Reconstruction – a series of proclamations directing the seceded states to hold conventions and elections to reform their civil governments.
When Southern states returned many of their old leaders, passed Black Codes to deprive the freedmen of many civil liberties, Congressional Republicans refused to seat legislators from those states and advanced legislation to overrule the Southern actions. Johnson vetoed their bills, Congressional Republicans overrode him, setting a pattern for the remainder of his presidency. Johnson opposed the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1866, Johnson went on an unprecedented national tour promoting his executive policies, seeking to destroy his Republican opponents; as the conflict between the branches of government grew, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, restricting Johnson's ability to fire Cabinet officials. When he persisted in trying to dismiss Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, he was impeached by the House of Representatives, narrowly avoided conviction in the Senate and removal from office. After failing to win the 1868 Democratic presidential nomination, Johnson left office in 1869. Returning to Tennessee after his presidency, Johnson sought political vindication, gained it in his eyes when he was elected to the Senate again in 1875, making Johnson the only former president to serve in the Senate.
He died months into his term. While some admire Johnson's strict constitutionalism, his strong opposition to federally guaranteed rights for African Americans is criticized, he is regarded by many historians as one of the worst presidents in American history. Andrew Johnson was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, on December 29, 1808, to Jacob Johnson and Mary McDonough, a laundress, he was of English, Scots-Irish, Irish ancestry. He had a brother William, four years his senior, an older sister Elizabeth, who died in childhood. Johnson's birth in a two-room shack was a political asset in the mid-19th century, he would remind voters of his humble origins. Jacob Johnson was a poor man, as had been his father, William Johnson, but he became town constable of Raleigh before marrying and starting a family. Both Jacob and Mary were illiterate, had worked as tavern servants, while Johnson never attended school. Johnson grew up in poverty. Jacob died of an apparent heart attack while ringing the town bell, shortly after rescuing three drowning men, when his son Andrew was three.
Polly Johnson became the sole support of her family. Her occupation was looked down on, as it took her into other homes unaccompanied. There were rumors that Andrew, who did not resemble his brother or sister, had been fathered by another man. Polly Johnson remarried, to Turner Doughtry, as poor as she was. Johnson's mother apprenticed her son William to James Selby. Andrew became an apprentice in Selby's shop at age ten and was bound to serve until his 21st birthday. Johnson lived with his mother for part of his service, one of Selby's employees taught him rudimentary literacy skills, his education was augmented by citizens who would come to Selby's shop to read to the tailors as they worked. Before he became an apprentice, Johnson came to listen; the readings caused a lifelong love of learning, one of his biographers, Annette Gordon-Reed, suggests that Johnson a gifted public speaker, learned the art as he threaded needles and cut cloth. Johnson was not happy at James Selby's, after about five years, both he and his brother ran away.
Selby responded by placing a r
Vice President of the United States
The Vice President of the United States is the second-highest officer in the executive branch of the U. S. federal government, after the President of the United States, ranks first in the presidential line of succession. The Vice President is an officer in the legislative branch, as President of the Senate. In this capacity, the Vice President presides over Senate deliberations, but may not vote except to cast a tie-breaking vote; the Vice President presides over joint sessions of Congress. The Vice President is indirectly elected together with the President to a four-year term of office by the people of the United States through the Electoral College. Section 2 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment, ratified in 1967, created a mechanism for intra-term vice presidential succession, establishing that vice presidential vacancies will be filled by the president and confirmed by both houses of Congress. Whenever a vice president had succeeded to the presidency or had died or resigned from office, the vice presidency remained vacant until the next presidential and vice presidential terms began.
The Vice President is a statutory member of the National Security Council, the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. The Office of the Vice President organises the vice president's official functions; the role of the vice presidency has changed since the office was created during the 1787 constitutional Convention. Over the past 100 years, the vice presidency has evolved into a position of domestic and foreign policy political power, is now seen as an integral part of a president's administration; as the Vice President's role within the executive branch has expanded, his role within the legislative branch has contracted. The Constitution does not expressly assign the vice presidency to any one branch, causing a dispute among scholars about which branch of government the office belongs to: 1) the executive branch; the modern view of the vice president as an officer of the executive branch is due in large part to the assignment of executive authority to the vice president by either the president or Congress.
Mike Pence of Indiana is the current Vice President of the United States. He assumed office on January 20, 2017. No mention of an office of vice president was made at the 1787 Constitutional Convention until near the end, when an 11-member committee on "Leftover Business" proposed a method of electing the chief executive. Delegates had considered the selection of the Senate's presiding officer, deciding that, "The Senate shall choose its own President," and had agreed that this official would be designated the executive's immediate successor, they had considered the mode of election of the executive but had not reached consensus. This all changed on September 4, when the committee recommended that the nation's chief executive be elected by an Electoral College, with each state having a number of presidential electors equal to the sum of that state's allocation of representatives and senators; the proposed presidential election process called for each state to choose members of the electoral college, who would use their discretion to select the candidates they individually viewed as best qualified.
Recognizing that loyalty to one's individual state outweighed loyalty to the new federation, the Constitution's framers assumed that individual electors would be inclined to choose a candidate from their own state over one from another. So they created the office of vice president and required that electors vote for two candidates, requiring that at least one of their votes must be for a candidate from outside the elector's state, believing that this second vote could be cast for a candidate of national character. Additionally, to guard against the possibility that some electors might strategically throw away their second vote in order to bolster their favorite son's chance of winning, it was specified that the first runner-up presidential candidate would become vice president. Creating this new office imposed a political cost on strategically discarded electoral votes, incentivizing electors to make their choices for president without resort to electoral gamesmanship and to cast their second ballot accordingly.
The resultant method of electing the president and vice president, spelled out in Article II, Section 1, Clause 3, allocated to each state a number of electors equal to the combined total of its Senate and House of Representatives membership. Each elector was allowed to vote for two people for president, but could not differentiate between their first and second choice for the presidency; the person receiving the greatest number of votes would be president, while the individual who received the next largest number of votes became vice president. If there were a tie for first or for second place, or if no one won a majority of votes, the president and vice president would be selected by means of contingent elections protocols stated in the clause; the emergence of political parties and nationally coordinated election campaigns during the 1790s soon frustrated this original plan. In the election of 1796, Federalist John Adams won the presidency, but his bitter rival, Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson came second and became vice president.
Thus, the president and vice president were from opposing parties.
Mark Noll
Mark Allan Noll is an American historian specializing in the history of Christianity in the United States. He holds the position of Research Professor of History at Regent College, having been Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. Noll is a Reformed evangelical Christian and in 2005 was named by Time magazine as one of the twenty-five most influential evangelicals in America. Born on July 18, 1946, Noll is a graduate of Wheaton College, the University of Iowa, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Vanderbilt University. Before coming to Notre Dame, he was on the faculty at Wheaton College, Illinois for twenty-seven years, where he taught in the departments of history and theology as McManis Professor of Christian Thought. While at Wheaton, Noll co-founded and directed the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, which ran from 1982 until 2014. Noll is a prolific author and many of his books have earned considerable acclaim within the academic community.
In particular, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, a book about anti-intellectual tendencies within the American evangelical movement, was covered in both religious and secular publications. He was awarded a National Humanities Medal in the Oval Office by President George W. Bush in 2006. Noll, along with other historians such as George Marsden, Nathan O. Hatch, David Bebbington, has contributed to the world's understanding of evangelical convictions and attitudes and present, he has caused many scholars and lay people to realize more the complications inherent in the question, "Is America a Christian nation?"In 1994, he co-signed Evangelicals and Catholics Together, an ecumenical document that expressed the need for greater cooperation between evangelical and Catholic leaders in the United States. From 2006 to 2016, Noll was a faculty member in Department of History at Notre Dame, he replaced the retiring George Marsden as Notre Dame's Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History. Noll stated that the move to Notre Dame allowed him to concentrate on fewer subjects than his duties at Wheaton had allowed.
Noll, Mark A.. The Bible in America: essays in cultural history. New York: Oxford University Press. Noll, Mark A. ed.. Eerdmans' handbook to Christianity in America. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. ———. Between Faith and Criticism. Harper and Row. ———. One Nation Under God: Christian Faith and Political Action in America. HarperCollins. ———. Religion and American Politics: From the Colonial Period to the 1980s. Oxford University Press. ———, ed.. Enlightenment in the Era of Samuel Stanhope Smith. Princeton University Press. ———. Princeton and the Republic, 1768-1822: The Search for Christian Religion and American politics: from the colonial period to the 1980s. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. ———. The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. ———. Seasons of Grace. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker. ———. Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker. ———. American Evangelical Christianity: An Introduction.
Blackwell Publishing Limited. ———. Protestants in America. Oxford University Press. ———. God and Mammon: Protestants and the Market, 1790-1860. Oxford University Press. ———. The Old Religion in a New World: The History of North American Christianity. Grand Rapids, MI: Erdmans. ———. The Princeton Theology 1812-1921: Scripture and Theological Method from Archibald Alexander to Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. ———. America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. Oxford University Press. ———. The Work We Have to Do: A History of Protestants in America. Oxford University Press. ———. The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards and the Wesleys. InterVarsity Press. ———. Is the Reformation Over? An Evangelical Assessment of Contemporary Roman Catholicism. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books. ———. Christians in the American Revolution. Regent College Publishing. ———. The Civil War as a Theological Crisis. University of North Carolina Press. ———. What Happened to Christian Canada?. Regent College Publishing.
———. The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith. InterVarsity Press. ———. God and Race in American Politics: A Short History. Princeton University Press. ———. Clouds of Witnesses: Christian Voices from Africa and Asia. InterVarsity Press. ———. Protestantism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ———. Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. ———. From Every Tribe and Nation: A Historian's Discovery of the Global Christian Story. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. ———. In The Beginning Was the Word: The Bible in American Public Life, 1492-1783. Oxford University Press. ———. "The Evangelical Mind Today". First Things. ———. "What Happened to Christian Canada?". Church History. 75: 245–73. Mark Noll Notre Dame home page
