# data[].attributes.body
The American people elect Abraham Lincoln as sixteenth president of the United States. Lincoln is the first Republican president in the nation and represents a party that opposes the spread of slavery into the territories of the United States.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Abraham Lincoln became the United States' 16th President in 1861, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy in 1863.

Lincoln warned the South in his Inaugural Address: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it."

Lincoln thought secession illegal, and was willing to use force to defend Federal law and the Union. When Confederate batteries fired on Fort Sumter and forced its surrender, he called on the states for 75,000 volunteers. Four more slave states joined the Confederacy but four remained within the Union. The Civil War had begun.

The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln had to struggle for a living and for learning. Five months before receiving his party's nomination for President, he sketched his life:

"I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families-second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks.... My father ... removed from Kentucky to ... Indiana, in my eighth year.... It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up.... Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher ... but that was all."

Lincoln made extraordinary efforts to attain knowledge while working on a farm, splitting rails for fences, and keeping store at New Salem, Illinois. He was a captain in the Black Hawk War, spent eight years in the Illinois legislature, and rode the circuit of courts for many years. His law partner said of him, "His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest."

He married Mary Todd, and they had four boys, only one of whom lived to maturity. In 1858 Lincoln ran against Stephen A. Douglas for Senator. He lost the election, but in debating with Douglas he gained a national reputation that won him the Republican nomination for President in 1860.

As President, he built the Republican Party into a strong national organization. Further, he rallied most of the northern Democrats to the Union cause. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy.

Lincoln never let the world forget that the Civil War involved an even larger issue. This he stated most movingly in dedicating the military cemetery at Gettysburg: "that we here highly 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."

Lincoln won re-election in 1864, as Union military triumphs heralded an end to the war. In his planning for peace, the President was flexible and generous, encouraging Southerners to lay down their arms and join speedily in reunion.

The spirit that guided him was clearly that of his Second Inaugural Address, now inscribed on one wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C.: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds.... "

On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theatre in Washington by John Wilkes Booth, an actor, who somehow thought he was helping the South. The opposite was the result, for with Lincoln's death, the possibility of peace with magnanimity died.

Learn more about Abraham Lincoln's spouse, Mary Todd Lincoln.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Abraham Lincoln became the United States' 16th President in 1861, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy in 1863.

# data[].attributes.body
When Abraham Lincoln won election in 1860 as the first Republican president on a platform pledging to keep slavery out of the territories, seven slave states in the deep South seceded and formed a new nation. South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas secede from the United States.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
1. July 1861

First Battle of Bull Run

Public demand pushed General-in-Chief Winfield Scott to advance on the South before adequately training his untried troops. Scott ordered General Irvin McDowell to advance on Confederate troops stationed at Manassas Junction, Virginia. McDowell attacked on July 21, and was initially successful, but the introduction of Confederate reinforcements resulted in a Southern victory and a chaotic retreat toward Washington by federal troops.

None of the included photographs of First Bull Run were made at the time of battle (July 21); the photographers had to wait until the Confederate Army evacuated Centreville and Manassas in March 1862. Their views of various landmarks of the previous summer are arranged according to the direction of the federal advance, a long flanking movement by Sudley's Ford.

2. July 1861

A Blockade of the South

To blockade the coast of the Confederacy effectively, the federal navy had to be improved. By July, the effort at improvement had made a difference and an effective blockade had begun. The South responded by building small, fast ships that could outmaneuver Union vessels.

Port Royal, South Carolina-1861-1862

On November 7, 1861, Captain Samuel F. Dupont's warships silenced Confederate guns in Fort Walker and Fort Beauregard. This victory enabled General Thomas W. Sherman's troops to occupy first Port Royal and then all the famous Sea Islands of South Carolina, where Timothy H. O'Sullivan recorded them making themselves at home.

Confederate Winter Quarters-1861-1862

These photographs show Confederate winter quarters at Manassas, Centreville, Fairfax Court House, and Falls Church, Virginia.

This time line was compiled by Joanne Freeman and owes a special debt to the Encyclopedia of American History by Richard B. Morris.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
1861 | Time Line of the Civil War | Articles and Essays | Civil War Glass Negatives and Related Prints | Digital Collections | Library of Congress

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
example: http://localhost:8000/programs/national-recording-preservation-plan/tools-and-resources/history/timeline/ */ .timeline-title { margin: 0; background: #F6F6F6; text-align: center; height: 30px; line-height: 30px; font-family: 'Roboto Slab', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold; font-size: 16px; top: 0; left: 0; } .timeline-new { padding-left: 0; list-style: none; height: 100%; padding-left: 200px; margin-bottom: 2rem; padding-top: 3.5rem; position: relative;

# data[].attributes.body
The event that triggered war came at Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay on April 12, 1861. Confederate forces fire upon Fort Sumter, South Carolina. The civil War formally begins.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The attack on Fort Sumter marked the official beginning of the American Civil War-a war that lasted four years, cost the lives of more than 620,000 Americans, and freed 3.9 million enslaved people from bondage.

How it ended

Confederate victory. With supplies nearly exhausted and his troops outnumbered, Union major Robert Anderson surrendered Fort Sumter to Brig. Gen. P.G.T Beauregard's Confederate forces. Major Anderson and his men were allowed to strike their colors, fire a 100-gun salute, and board a ship bound for New York, where they were greeted as heroes. Both the North and South immediately called for volunteers to mobilize for war.

In context

By 1861, the country had already experienced decades of short-lived but ultimately failed compromises concerning the expansion of slavery in the United States and its territories. The election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States in 1860-a man who declared "I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free"-threatened the culture and economy of southern slave states and served as a catalyst for secession. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina seceded from the United States, and by February 2, 1861, six more states followed suit. Southern delegates met on February 4, 1861, in Montgomery, AL., and established the Confederate States of America, with Mississippi senator Jefferson Davis elected as its provisional president. Confederate militia forces began seizing United States forts and property throughout the south. With a lame-duck president in office, and a controversial president-elect poised to succeed him, the crisis approached a boiling point and exploded at Fort Sumter.

Before the Battle

In Charleston, the birthplace of secession, tempers are on edge. A delegation from the state goes to Washington, D.C., demanding the surrender of the Federal military installations in the new "independent republic of South Carolina." President James Buchanan refuses to comply. Charleston is the Confederacy's most important port on the Southeast coast. The harbor is defended by three federal forts: Sumter; Castle Pinckney, one mile off the city's Battery; and heavily armed Fort Moultrie, on Sullivan's Island. Major Anderson's command is based at Fort Moultrie, but with its guns pointed out to sea, it cannot defend a land attack. On December 26, Charlestonians awake to discover that Anderson and his tiny garrison of 90 men have slipped away from Fort Moultrie to the more defensible Fort Sumter. For secessionists, Anderson's move is, as one Charlestonian wrote to a friend, "like casting a spark into a magazine,"

Adding to the major's concern is his dangerously dwindling store of supplies. On January 5, 1861, the Star of the West departs from New York with some 200 reinforcements and provisions for the Sumter garrison. As the ship approaches Charleston Harbor on January 9, cadets from the Citadel fire, forcing the crew to abandon its mission. On March 1, Jefferson Davis orders Brig. Gen P.G.T. Beauregard to take command of the growing southern forces in Charleston. On April 4, Lincoln informs southern delegates that he intends to attempt to resupply Fort Sumter, as its garrison is now critically in need. To South Carolinians, any attempt to reinforce Sumter means war. "Now the issue of battle is to be forced upon us," declared the Charleston Mercury. "We will meet the invader, and the God of Battles must decide the issue between the hostile hirelings of Abolition hate and Northern tyranny."

On April 9, Davis and the Confederate cabinet decide to "strike a blow!" Davis orders Beauregard to take Fort Sumter. The next day, three of Beauregard's aides sail to the fort and courteously demand the garrison's surrender. Anderson is equally courteous, but refuses: "I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your communication demanding the evacuation of this fort, and to say, in reply thereto, that it is a demand with which I regret that my sense of honor, and of my obligations to my Government, prevent my compliance." He also informs the delegation that the garrison's supplies will only last until April 15.

During the Battle

April 12. At 4:30 a.m., a flaming mortar shot arcs into the air and explodes over Fort Sumter. On this signal, Confederate guns from fortifications and floating batteries around Charleston Harbor roar to life. Outmanned, outgunned, undersupplied, and nearly surrounded by enemy batteries, Anderson waits until around 7:00 a.m. to respond. Captain Abner Doubleday volunteers to fire the first cannon at the Confederates, a 32-pound shot that bounces off the roof of the Iron Battery on Cummings Point.

For nearly 36 hours the two sides keep up this unequal contest. A shell strikes the flagpole of Fort Sumter, and the American colors fall to the earth, only to be hoisted back up the hastily repaired pole. Confederates fire hotshot from Fort Moultrie into Fort Sumter. Buildings begin to burn within the fort. With no more resources, Anderson surrenders Fort Sumter to Confederate forces.

April 13. At 2:30 p.m., Maj. Anderson and his men strike their colors and prepare to leave the fort. Sadly, the only casualties at Fort Sumter come during the 100-gun salute, when a round explodes prematurely, killing Pvt. Daniel Hough and mortally wounding another soldier. The attack is over, but the war had just begun.

Aftermath

Following the evacuation of Major Robert Anderson and his Federal garrison on the afternoon of April 14, 1861, Fort Sumter is occupied initially by Confederate troops of Company B of the First South Carolina Artillery Battalion and a volunteer company of the Palmetto Guard, a local militia unit. The fort remains in Confederate hands for the next four years until all Confederate forces evacuate Charleston on the evening of February 17, 1865.

Despite having surrendered, Anderson and his men are greeted as heroes when they disembark in New York. Capt. Abner Doubleday notes later that "all the passing steamers saluted us with their steam-whistles and bells, and cheer after cheer went up from the ferry boats and vessels in the harbor." Anderson's valor during the attack and commitment to duty are praised by the Union. Beauregard is also hailed for this first Confederate victory. He is later ordered to direct the troops at Bull Run.

Fort Sumter: Featured Resources

Related Battles

Charleston Harbor, SC | April 12, 1861

Result: Confederate Victory

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Early in the morning of April 12, 1861, Confederate guns around Charleston Harbor opened fire on Fort Sumter. The American Civil War was officially upon both the North and the South. A war that lasted four years and cost the lives of more than 620,000 Americans.

# data[].attributes.body
President Lincoln issues a public declaration that an insurrection exists and calls for 75,000 militia to stop the rebellion. As a result of this call for volunteers, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee secede from the Union in the following weeks.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
February 13-April 11

A special election in January 1861 allowed Virginia voters the opportunity to pick delegates to the convention. To the dismay of secessionists in Virginia and across the South, of the 152 delegates they elected, a solid majority were Unionist. Desire to leave the Union had never been as strong in the Upper South, and some Unionists speculated that Virginia's example might even draw the wayward Deep South back into the United States.

When the convention met on February 13 in the Mechanics Institute at the foot of Capitol Square in Richmond, all of the factions favored delay. Radical secession men, small in number, were content to let the Confederates organize their infant republic in Montgomery, Alabama, before acting. Adamant Unionists, also a minority, bided their time as well. The great majority of delegates were conservatives who loved the Union, mistrusted Lincoln, but accepted his election and inauguration. They hoped that, like their predecessors in constitutional disputes of years past, they could cobble together some grand Union-saving compromise, persuade the convention to endorse it, and then adjourn.

The Confederacy sent emissaries to the slave states of the Upper South to urge them to join the republic created in Montgomery. The Virginia convention permitted these representatives to address its members, though most delegates were immune to their strident demands. On the floor of the convention, constitutional theory became personal and ugly as delegates denounced one another in heated terms. Jubal A. Early, a future Confederate general who was then a staunch Unionist from Franklin County, ridiculed the radical minority for wanting to subvert the national government. He almost came to blows with John Goode, a hot-blooded secessionist delegate, for presuming to know the minds of Early's constituents back home.

Waitman Thomas Willey, a Morgantown lawyer who would help to found the new state of West Virginia, sent a shudder through the convention when he raised unresolved issues related to the disparity in political power between the eastern and western sections of Virginia. (These same issues had been a focus of the Constitutional Convention of 1850-1851.) At issue in particular was the preferential taxation on slaves-few voters in western Virginia owned slaves-and the dispute threatened to divide the convention even further.

John Baldwin of Staunton, a lawyer and slave owner, was representative of the conservative majority of delegates when he challenged anyone to deny that the national government had always supported Southern property rights, including slaves. The Lincoln administration did not represent an assault on Southern liberties, he argued, and even if it did, the U.S. Constitution protected them. Surely, Baldwin asserted, the Founding Fathers did not expect Americans to abandon those constitutional protections at the first sign of trouble. He compared Virginia to a lighthouse that could withstand "the breasting and surging waves of Northern fanaticism and of Southern violence."

Henry A. Wise, who had been governor during the 1859 assault on Harpers Ferry by the abolitionist John Brown, was the most influential delegate. Distrusted on all sides at first, he gradually won the confidence of the radical secessionists and became their champion. He was a vain, mercurial, vituperative partisan whose long hair and angular, gaunt features gave him the look of a dangerous man. He was on his feet speaking more frequently and at greater length than any other delegate.

Yet Wise and the secessionist minority were disheartened not just by the refusal of the convention's Unionist majority to heed their warnings about threats to slavery and Southern rights but also because rumors out of Washington undercut their claim that war was at hand. People speculated that to reduce tension with the Confederacy, Lincoln might give up Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, one of the last bastions in the Deep South still in federal hands. There was some basis to the rumors. The U.S. secretary of state, William H. Seward, working behind the scenes with Virginia Unionists, hinted that Lincoln would indeed give up the fort.

After more than a month of long-winded speeches, parliamentary delay, and posturing by delegates on all sides, the convention put secession to a vote on April 4. Secessionists rightly concluded that sentiment had moved more in their direction since February, but by believing their own overheated rhetoric and reading too much into the strength of secessionist demonstrations outside the convention, they overestimated their power within it. They were stunned by overwhelming defeat; the vote was 90 to 45 against secession. John Janney, a prominent former Whig Party member from Loudoun County and the president of the convention, exulted in a letter to his wife that the secessionists were now "without the slightest hope of success." The convention, however, did not adjourn but continued to deliberate. Ominously for the Unionists, the vote came a week after Lincoln ended his vacillation over what to do and resolved to send a naval expedition to resupply Fort Sumter with food and water.

April 12-17

Lincoln sent a pro forma warning to the Confederates about the relief expedition. On April 12, before it arrived, forces under the command of Pierre G. T. Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter. (Virginian Edmund Ruffin is often given credit, inaccurately, for firing the first shot of the war at Sumter.) The fort's tiny garrison surrendered two days later after a show of resistance. News of this dramatic clash of arms electrified the North and the Confederate States. In Virginia, however, the Unionist majority in the convention still seemed to hold together. On April 8, the delegates had relocated from the cramped quarters of the Mechanics Institute to the State Capitol after the legislature adjourned. In the meantime, radical secessionists organized their own gathering nearby, calling it the People's Spontaneous Convention. The more extreme elements there threatened to take matters into their own hands, even to overthrow the elected convention and align Virginia with the Confederacy.

That was how matters stood when the convention reopened its debates on the day of Fort Sumter's surrender. At first there was confusion over which side had started the fight. Robert Conrad, a delegate from Frederick County, asserted that Virginians "will not consent to have the Union dissolved either by Mr. Lincoln or the Southern disunionists, at their pleasure." Though initiative had passed to other actors beyond the borders of the state, Virginia could still influence the course of events, now that some sort of wider clash seemed unstoppable.

On April 15, the convention heard from a three-man delegation it had sent to negotiate with Lincoln directly. Their futile meeting at the White House occurred on the day Lincoln announced his response to the surrender of Fort Sumter-a proclamation calling for all loyal states to send their militias to put down the Confederate rebellion. The news sent shock waves throughout the country that engendered a mass outpouring of patriotic demonstrations in the North and defiance in the Confederate States. Alexander H. H. Stuart of Staunton, Baldwin's brother-in-law and law partner and the sole Unionist among the Virginia trio sent to Washington, admitted that Lincoln's proclamation was provocative. But he echoed the fervent hopes of Unionists in the Upper South that they still could prevent civil war and, if not, could somehow shield their region from the fighting. "Secession is not only war," he warned his colleagues, "but it is emancipation; it is bankruptcy; it is repudiation; it is widespread ruin to our people."

On April 16 the delegates voted to go into secret session in order to air their differences more candidly than they could in the presence of reporters and the public. After William Ballard Preston, Unionist-turned-secessionist from Montgomery County, offered the Ordinance of Secession for a vote, every member who wished to speak had his chance. Robert Eden Scott of Fauquier County proposed an alternative to the ordinance's declaration of immediate secession (followed by ratification by the voters): a statewide referendum that would give voters a choice between secession and consultation with the other slave states on the border between the United States and the new Confederacy. Here was the last desperate hope of Virginia Unionists, a chance to form a third way between the extremes of the Confederacy and the United States.

To the anger of secessionists, for five days after the news of Fort Sumter galvanized opinion across America, the convention continued to debate. When Scott's substitute motion finally was put to a vote, it lost, 77 to 64. The Unionist majority had melted away in the heat of both Fort Sumter and Lincoln's proclamation. Everyone in the hall now knew that the Ordinance of Secession would pass. When Wise rose to speak, it was a performance no one would forget. He meant to crush any lingering opposition to secession and gird the state for war.

Even more, he revealed military action already under way-militia units from the Shenandoah Valley, which had secretly pledged their loyalty to Wise personally and not to the state government, were even then en route to capture the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. Governor John Letcher was convinced at the last minute to give after-the-fact sanction to this movement, but it had begun as an extralegal act of war against the federal government by Wise and his coconspirators. As Wise rose to speak, he brandished a revolver and shouted that "blood will be flowing at Harper's Ferry before night." "We are here indulging in foolish debates," he said, in an attempt to cow the Unionist delegates, "the only result of which must be delay, and, perhaps, ruin."

Baldwin rose to oppose Wise's threats, questioning the former governor's desire to behave as if Virginia were already seceded and at war. But when Baldwin declared that voters should have the chance to first decide the question of secession, Wise argued that by then it will be too late. The "enemy," as he referred to the United States government, will have pounced. In the end, Baldwin, who would later reluctantly wear a Confederate uniform, was no match for Wise's brutal questioning of his loyalty to Virginia. "The future," he lamented, "looks dark-dark and dreary." After every delegate had his say, Wise called for the vote. Secession passed, 88 to 55. A statewide referendum on May 23 passed overwhelmingly and made secession official.

April 18-May 1

The secessionists had won; the Upper South was beginning to crack apart. Jubal Early spoke for those Unionists who accepted defeat and meant to support Virginia whatever its path forward. He issued a warning, however: "I would call upon gentlemen to recollect that it often happens that those who begin a revolution do not end it." He then threw his support behind the effort to prepare Virginia for war.

After the Ordinance of Secession passed, Wise strode confidently over to the People's Spontaneous Convention, meeting in the nearby Metropolitan Hall. The delegates there received him with clamorous cheers as he gave voice to the secessionists' dearest hopes. With trembling anticipation, an eyewitness to the sight concluded, "It was now Independence or Death."

John Janney, the staunch Unionist president of the convention, had warned right before the vote that secession would leave the banks of the Potomac River "saturated with blood." Even so, after the fateful vote he remained as president out of a sense of duty when the convention turned from debate to preparations for war. Other Unionists, mainly from the state's northwestern counties, did not resign themselves to defeat as Janney did. Right after the vote, many of them hurriedly returned to their constituencies and plotted to break away from secessionist eastern Virginia. The sectional divide in the state that had pitted east against west for decades now boiled over. "We can look to Richmond for taxes and treason, but for little else," sneered a Wheeling newspaper. While the majority of delegates to the convention, including Unionists like Janney, backed the decision to secede, western delegates set in motion the efforts that would result in the birth of West Virginia.

On April 27, nearly a month before the perfunctory referendum would endorse the Ordinance of Secession, Virginia offered to join the Confederacy and make Richmond its capital. The tragedy of the Unionist majority in the convention was that, though its members loathed the thought of leaving the United States, in the end they could not countenance fighting against fellow white Southerners. In retrospect, their hopes for compromise were unfounded, but in the spring of 1861 they upheld the standard of Upper South unionism as a middle way between the two sides preparing for war.

Delegates are elected to the Virginia Convention, to convene in Richmond, to consider the constitutional crisis triggered by the election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. president and the secession of Deep South states.

The Virginia Convention convenes in the Mechanics Institute at the foot of Capitol Hill in Richmond.

A motion for secession is defeated, 45 to 90, in the Virginia Convention meeting in Richmond.

After the General Assembly adjourns, the Virginia Convention moves its deliberations from the Mechanics Institute to the Capitol in Richmond.

A three-man delegation sent by the Virginia Convention sitting in Richmond meets with Abraham Lincoln at the White House. It is the same day his proclamation calling for volunteers to put down the Confederate rebellion is published in newspapers.

The Virginia Convention meeting in Richmond goes into secret session so that its deeply divided delegates may speak more frankly. A proposal by Unionist delegate Robert Eden Scott is defeated 64 to 77. It offered to give voters a referendum to choose between immediate secession and consultation with the other slave states of the Upper South.

Delegates at the Virginia Convention in Richmond pass an Ordinance of Secession by a vote of 88 to 55. Thirty-two of the "no" votes come from trans-Allegheny delegates, who are more firmly Unionist than representatives from other parts of the state.

Virginia offers to join the Confederate States of America and make Richmond its capital.

The Virginia Convention, meeting in Richmond, adjourns, completing its substantive work. There will be a so-called Adjourned Session (June 12 through July 1) and a Second Adjourned Session (November 13 through December 6), but they do little work of note.

The Ordinance of Secession is approved by Virginia voters by a vote of 125,950 to 20,373, with many western Virginia votes being discarded from the tally.

Crofts, Daniel W. Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.

Dew, Charles B. Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001.

Lankford, Nelson D. Cry Havoc! The Crooked Road to Civil War, 1861. New York: Viking, 2007.

Link, William A. Roots of Secession: Slavery and Politics in Antebellum Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

Shanks, Henry T. The Secession Movement in Virginia, 1847-1861. Richmond: Garret & Massie, 1934.

APA Citation:

Lankford, Nelson. Virginia Convention of 1861. (2021, February 01). In Encyclopedia Virginia. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/virginia-convention-of-1861.

MLA Citation:

Lankford, Nelson. "Virginia Convention of 1861" Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, (01 Feb. 2021). Web. 06 Dec. 2022

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Virginia Convention of 1861 - Encyclopedia Virginia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
February 13-April 11 Electing Delegates to the Virginia Convention of 1861 A special election in January 1861 allowed Virginia voters the opportunity to pick delegates to the convention. To the dismay of secessionists in Virginia and across the South, of the 152 delegates they elected, a solid majority were Unionist.

# data[].attributes.body
Battle of Mill Springs, Kentucky. This Federal victory weakened the Confederate hold on the state.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Currier and Ives lithograph of the Battle of Mill Springs
Library of Congress

The rout of the enemy was complete . . . They then threw away their arms and dispersed through the mountain byways in direction of Monticello, but are so completely demoralized that I don't believe they will make a stand short of Tennessee.
Dispatch from USA Gen. Thomas to Maj. Gen. McClellan

The Battle of Mill Springs was a significant Union victory early in the Civil War. Early in the fighting, amidst fog and dim early light, on January 19, 1862, Confederate General Felix K. Zollicoffer lost his life not realizing he was approaching a Union officer rather than a fellow Confederate. The early loss of their leader combined with intense fire from the Union Army caused the Confederate forces to fall back, then rally, and ultimately retreat into Tennessee. This victory helped bolster morale in the North and helped to keep Kentucky under Union control.

The decisive Union victory at the Battle of Mill Springs, Kentucky, on January 19, 1862, led to the total collapse of the eastern sector of the Confederate defensive line established to defend the Upper South and hopefully secure Kentucky's allegiance to the Southern cause. Considered the first significant Union victory in the western theater of the Civil War, Mill Springs was soon followed by Federal capture of Forts Henry and Donelson, in northwestern Tennessee, coupled with the surrender of an entire Confederate army. This succession of victories, which permitted Union forces to carry the war deeper into Tennessee, reenergized Northern war interests and led directly to the capture of Nashville in Middle Tennessee, setting in motion the sequence of movements resulting in the titanic battle won by Union forces at Shiloh, on April 6-7, in southwestern Tennessee. Kentucky's importance to the Union cause during the war was demonstrated in many ways, its strategic value expressed pointedly by President Abraham Lincoln, who early on in the conflict stated, "I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky." Although soon overshadowed by subsequent events and an ever increasingly bloodier conflict, the initial and decisive defeat suffered by the Confederacy at Mill Springs, materially aided United States forces to seize the initiative in the West and retain control of Kentucky throughout the war.
Hope Fades for a Neutral Kentucky

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Battle of Mill Springs - Mill Springs Battlefield National Monument (U.S. National Park Service)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The rout of the enemy was complete . . . They then threw away their arms and dispersed through the mountain byways in direction of Monticello, but are so completely demoralized that I don't believe they will make a stand short of Tennessee. Dispatch from USA Gen. Thomas to Maj.

# data[].attributes.body
Following the US victory at Antietam, President Lincoln introduces the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which announced Lincoln's intention to declare all enslaved people free on January 1, 1863 if those places remained in rebellion at that time.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."

Despite this expansive wording, the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the United States, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy (the Southern secessionist states) that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union (United States) military victory.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation, it captured the hearts and imagination of millions of Americans and fundamentally transformed the character of the war. After January 1, 1863, every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom. Moreover, the Proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become liberators. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.

From the first days of the Civil War, slaves had acted to secure their own liberty. The Emancipation Proclamation confirmed their insistence that the war for the Union must become a war for freedom. It added moral force to the Union cause and strengthened the Union both militarily and politically. As a milestone along the road to slavery's final destruction, the Emancipation Proclamation has assumed a place among the great documents of human freedom.

The original of the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, is in the National Archives in Washington, DC. With the text covering five pages the document was originally tied with narrow red and blue ribbons, which were attached to the signature page by a wafered impression of the seal of the United States. Most of the ribbon remains; parts of the seal are still decipherable, but other parts have worn off.

The document was bound with other proclamations in a large volume preserved for many years by the Department of State. When it was prepared for binding, it was reinforced with strips along the center folds and then mounted on a still larger sheet of heavy paper. Written in red ink on the upper right-hand corner of this large sheet is the number of the Proclamation, 95, given to it by the Department of State long after it was signed. With other records, the volume containing the Emancipation Proclamation was transferred in 1936 from the Department of State to the National Archives of the United States.

The Emancipation Proclamation

Select Resources

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Enlarge The Emancipation Proclamation (page 1) Record Group 11 General Records of the United States View in National Archives Catalog Español President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war.

# data[].attributes.body
The Emancipation Proclamation goes into effect. The Emancipation Proclamation was a war measure that declared enslaved people in rebelling states to be free, authorized the enlistment of black troops, and outraged white Southerners. The proclamation was an important turning point in the war for the United States and in the eventual shift from the goal of restoring the Union as it was, to building a better Union without slavery.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
An Act of Justice

Summer 1993, Vol. 25, No. 2

By John Hope Franklin

Thursday, January 1, 1863, was a bright, crisp day in the nation's capital. The previous day had been a strenuous one for President Lincoln, but New Year's Day was to be even more strenuous. So he rose early. There was much to do, not the least of which was to put the finishing touches on the Emancipation Proclamation. At 10:45 the document was brought to the White House by Secretary of State William Seward. The President signed it, but he noticed an error in the superscription. It read, "In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my name and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed." The President had never used that form in proclamations, always preferring to say "In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand. . . ." He asked Seward to make the correction, and the formal signing would be made on the corrected copy.

The traditional New Year's Day reception at the White House began that morning at 11 o'clock. Members of the Cabinet and the diplomatic corps were among the first to arrive. Officers of the Army and Navy arrived in a body at half past 11. The public was admitted at noon, and then Seward and his son Frederick, the Assistant Secretary of State, returned with the corrected draft. The rigid laws of etiquette held the President to his duty for 3 hours, as his secretaries Nicholay and Hay observed. "Had necessity required it, he could of course have left such mere social occupation at any moment," they pointed out, "but the President saw no occasion for precipitancy. On the other hand, he probably deemed it wise that the completion of this momentous executive act should be attended by every circumstance of deliberation."

After the guests departed, the President went upstairs to his study for the signing in the presence of a few friends. No Cabinet meeting was called, and no attempt was made to have a ceremony. Later, Lincoln told F. B. Carpenter, the artist, that as he took up the pen to sign the paper, his hand shook so violently that he could not write. "I could not for a moment control my arm. I paused, and a superstitious feeling came over me which made me hesitate. . . . In a moment I remembered that I had been shaking hands for hours with several hundred people, and hence a very simple explanation of the trembling and shaking of my arm." With a hearty laugh at his own thoughts, the President proceeded to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. Just before he affixed his name to the document, he said, "I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right than I do in signing this paper."

When I made my first serious study of this document, several copies of the December 30 draft were in existence. The copies of Cabinet officers Edward Bates, Francis Blair, William Seward, and Salmon P. Chase were in the Library of Congress. The draft that the President worked with on December 31 and the morning of New Year's Day is considered the final manuscript draft. The principal parts of the text are written in the President's hand. The two paragraphs from the Preliminary Proclamation of September 22, 1862, were clipped from a printed copy and pasted on to the President's draft, "merely to save writing." The superscription and the final closing are in the hand of a clerk in the Department of State. Later in the year, Lincoln presented his copy to the ladies in charge of the Northwestern Fair in Chicago. He told them that he had some desire to retain the paper, "but if it shall contribute to the relief and comfort of the soldiers, that will be better," he said most graciously. Thomas Bryan purchased it and presented it to the Soldiers' Home in Chicago, of which he was president. The home was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Fortunately, four photographic copies of the original had been made. The official engrossed document is in the National Archives and follows Lincoln's original copy.

It is worth observing that there was no mention, in the final draft, of Lincoln's pet schemes of compensation and colonization, which were in the Preliminary Proclamation of September 22, 1862. Perhaps Lincoln was about to give up on such impracticable propositions. In the Preliminary Proclamation, the President had said that he would declare slaves in designated territories "thenceforward, and forever free." In the final draft of January 1, 1863, he was content to say that they "are, and henceforward shall be free." Nothing had been said in the preliminary draft about the use of blacks as soldiers. In the summer of 1862 the Confiscation Act had authorized the President to use blacks in any way he saw fit, and there had been some limited use of them in noncombat activities. In stating in the Proclamation that former slaves were to be received into the armed services, the President believed that he was using congressional authority to strike a mighty blow against the Confederacy.

It was late afternoon before the Proclamation was ready for transmission to the press and others. Earlier drafts had been available, and some papers, including the Washington Evening Star had used those drafts, but it was at about 8 p.m. on January 1 that the transmission of the text over the telegraph wires actually began.

Young Edward Rosewater, scarcely 20 years old, had an exciting New Year's Day. He was a mere telegraph operator in the War Department, but he knew the President and had gone to the White House reception earlier that day and had greeted him. When the President made his regular call at the telegraph office that evening, young Rosewater was on duty and was more excited than ever. He greeted the President and went back to his work. Lincoln walked over to see what Rosewater was sending out. It was the Emancipation Proclamation! If Rosewater was excited, the President seemed the picture of relaxation. After watching the young operator for a while, the President went over to the desk of Tom Eckert, the chief telegraph operator in the War Department, sat in his favorite chair, where he had written most of the Preliminary Proclamation the previous summer, and gave his feet the proper elevation. For him, it was the end of a long, busy, but perfect day.

For many others in various parts of the country, the day was just beginning, for the celebrations were not considered official until word was received that the President had actually signed the Proclamation. The slaves of the District of Columbia did not have to wait, however, for back in April 1862 the Congress had passed a law setting them free. Even so, they joined in the widespread celebrations on New Year's Day. At Israel Bethel Church, Rev. Henry McNeal Turner went out and secured a copy of the Washington Evening Star that carried the text of the Proclamation. Back at the church, Turner waved the newspaper from the pulpit and began to read the document. This was the signal for unrestrained celebration characterized by men squealing, women fainting, dogs barking, and whites and blacks shaking hands. The Washington celebrations continued far into the night. In the Navy Yard, cannons began to roar and continued for some time.

In New York the news of the Proclamation was received with mixed feelings. Blacks looked and felt happy, one reporter said, while abolitionists "looked glum and grumbled . . . that the proclamation was only given on account of military necessity." Within a week, however, there were several large celebrations in which abolitionists took part. At Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, the celebrated Henry Ward Beecher preached a commemorative sermon to an overflow audience. "The Proclamation may not free a single slave," he declared, "but it gives liberty a moral recognition." There was still another celebration at Cooper Union on January 5. Several speakers, including the veteran abolitionist Lewis Tappan, addressed the overflow audience. Music interspersed the several addresses. Two of the renditions were the "New John Brown Song" and the "Emancipation Hymn."

A veritable galaxy of leading literary figures gathered in the Music Hall in Boston to take notice of the climax of the fight that New England abolitionists had led for more than a generation. Among those present were John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Francis Parkman, and Josiah Quincy. Toward the close of the meeting, Ralph Waldo Emerson read his "Boston Hymn" to the audience. In the evening, a large crowd gathered at Tremont Temple to await the news that the President had signed the Proclamation. Among the speakers were Judge Thomas Russell, Anna Dickinson, Leonard Grimes, William Wells Brown, and Frederick Douglass. Finally, it was announced that "It is coming over the wire," and pandemonium broke out! At midnight, the group had to vacate Tremont Temple, and from there they went to the Twelfth Baptist Church at the invitation of its pastor, Leonard Grimes. Soon the church was packed, and it was almost dawn when the assemblage dispersed. Frederick Douglass pronounced it a "worthy celebration of the first step on the part of the nation in its departure from the thraldom of the ages."

The trenchant observation by Douglass that the Emancipation Proclamation was but the first step could not have been more accurate. Although the Presidential decree would not free slaves in areas where the United States could not enforce the Proclamation, it sent a mighty signal both to the slaves and to the Confederacy that enslavement would no longer be tolerated. An important part of that signal was the invitation to the slaves to take up arms and participate in the fight for their own freedom. That more than 185,000 slaves as well as free blacks accepted the invitation indicates that those who had been the victims of thraldom were now among the most enthusiastic freedom fighters.

Meanwhile, no one appreciated better than Lincoln the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation had a quite limited effect in freeing the slaves directly. It should be remembered, however, that in the Proclamation he called emancipation "an act of justice," and in later weeks and months he did everything he could to confirm his view that it was An Act of Justice. And no one was more anxious than Lincoln to take the necessary additional steps to bring about actual freedom. Thus, he proposed that the Republican Party include in its 1864 platform a plank calling for the abolition of slavery by constitutional amendment. When he was "notified" of his renomination, as was the custom in those days, he singled out that plank in the platform calling for constitutional emancipation and pronounced it "a fitting and necessary conclusion to the final success of the Union cause." Early in 1865, when Congress sent the amendment to Lincoln for his signature, he is reported to have said, "This amendment is a King's cure for all the evils. It winds the whole thing up."

Despite the fact that the Proclamation did not emancipate the slaves and surely did not do what the Thirteenth Amendment did in winding things up, it is the Proclamation and not the Thirteenth Amendment that has been remembered and celebrated over the past 130 years. That should not be surprising. Americans seem not to take to celebrating legal documents. The language of such documents is not particularly inspiring, and they are the product of the deliberations of large numbers of people. We celebrate the Declaration of Independence, but not the ratification of the Constitution. Jefferson's words in the Declaration moved the emerging Americans in a way that Madison's committee of style failed to do in the Constitution.

Thus, almost annually--at least for the first hundred years--each New Year's Day was marked in many parts of the country by a grand celebration. Replete with brass band, if there was one, an African-American fire company, if there was one, and social, religious, and civic organizations, African Americans of the community would march to the courthouse, to some church, or the high school. There, they would assemble to hear the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, followed by an oration by a prominent person. The speeches varied in character and purpose. Some of them urged African Americans to insist upon equal rights; some of them urged frugality and greater attention to morals; while still others urged their listeners to harbor no ill will toward their white brethren.

As the 50th anniversary of the Proclamation approached, James Weldon Johnson, already a writer of some distinction, was serving a tour of duty as U.S. Consul in Corinto, Nicaragua. His biographer, Eugene Levy, tells us that Johnson for some time had considered writing a poem commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. In September 1912, when he read of the ceremonies marking the Preliminary Proclamation, he realized that he had only 100 days in which to write the poem. Using all of his spare time, of which there was little, Johnson hammered out "Fifty Years." There was not enough time to publish it in one of the major literary monthly journals, so he turned to the New York Times, which published it on its editorial page on January 1, 1913.

Addressing his fellow African Americans in the first stanzas, Johnson said:

O Brothers mine, to-day we stand
Where half a century sweeps our ken,
Since God, through Lincoln's ready hand,
Struck off our bonds and made us men.
Then, in a more assertive tone, making certain that humility did not replace self-confidence, he said:

In the second half of the Proclamation's first century, the annual celebrations diminished in extent as well as in fervor. Some celebrants, with an eye on a quick buck, began to promote June 19, the day on which President Lincoln signed a bill abolishing slavery in the territories. The bill did not apply to Texas, which was a state in the Confederacy, but slick promoters there soon drew attention to that day and persuaded Texans, Oklahomans, and others in the Southwest that this was indeed the day of emancipation. It was never quite clear to me, moreover, why we in Oklahoma celebrated August 4 as well as Juneteenth and January 1, but clearly the summer months had many advantages over a January observance.

Something else was diluting the celebrations of the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. It was bad enough that a casual reading of the Proclamation made clear that it did not set the slaves free. It was also clear that neither the Reconstruction amendments nor the legislation and Executive orders of subsequent years had propelled African Americans much closer to real freedom and true equality. The physical violence, the wholesale disfranchisement, and the widespread degradation of blacks in every conceivable form merely demonstrated the resourcefulness and creativity of those white Americans who were determined to deny basic constitutional rights to their black brothers.

Several years before 1963, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People began to use the motto "Free by '63." Other groups adopted the motto and focused more attention on the drive for equality. Many leaders were especially sensitive to the significance of the Emancipation Centennial in pointing up racial inequality in American life. On September 22, 1962, when Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York spoke in Washington to mark the opening of the exhibit of the Preliminary Proclamation, "the state's most treasured possession," he said, "the very existence of the document stirs our conscience with the knowledge that Lincoln's vision of a nation truly fulfilling its spiritual heritage is not yet achieved."

During the centennial year itself, the United States Commission on Civil Rights presented to the President a report on the history of civil rights, most of which I wrote on contract with the Commission. Knowing that I would be out of the country during most of the centennial year, I published my history of the Emancipation Proclamation as my contribution to the observance.* On Lincoln's birthday in 1963, President and Mrs. Kennedy received more than a thousand black and white citizens at the White House and presented to each of them a copy of the report of the Civil Rights Commission, called Freedom to the Free. Speaking at Gettysburg later that year, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson said, "Until justice is blind, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact." President Kennedy took note of the absence of equality when he said, "Surely, in 1963, 100 years after emancipation, it should not be necessary for any American citizen to demonstrate in the streets for an opportunity to stop at a hotel, or eat at a lunch counter . . . on the same terms as any other customer."

Although it is now possible for most African Americans to eat at a lunch counter in most parts of the United States, the extension of these civilities has been accompanied by subtle, yet barbarous forms of discrimination. These forms extend from redlining in the sale of real estate to discrimination in employment to the maladministration of justice. In issuing the Emancipation Proclamation and wording it as he did, Lincoln went as far as he felt the law permitted him to go. In subsequent months he went a bit further, inch by inch, until before his death he was calling for the enfranchisement of some blacks. The difference between the position of Lincoln in 1863 and Americans in 1993 is that our leaders in high places seem not to have either the humanity or the courage of Lincoln. The law itself is no longer an obstruction to justice and equality, but it is the people who live under the law who are themselves an obvious obstruction to justice. One can only hope that sooner rather than later we can all find the courage to live under the spirit of the Emancipation Proclamation and under the laws that flowed from its inspiration.
This essay is based on a talk given by John Hope Franklin at the National Archives, January 4, 1993, on the occasion of the 130th anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
*The Emancipation Proclamation (Garden City, NW: Doubleday and Company, 1963; reprint, Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1994).

John Hope Franklin has taught at Fisk University, the University of Chicago, and most recently, Duke University, where he is James B. Duke Professor of History Emeritus. Past president of the American Historical Association and the Society of Phi Beta Kappa, his publications include From Slavery to Freedom (1947), The Emancipation Proclamation (1963), and Race and History: Selected Essays, 1938-1988 (1990).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
An Act of Justice Summer 1993, Vol. 25, No. 2 By John Hope Franklin [table striped="true" responsive="true"] President Abraham Lincoln (NARA, 64-M-163) [/table] Thursday, January 1, 1863, was a bright, crisp day in the nation's capital. The previous day had been a strenuous one for President Lincoln, but New Year's Day was to be even more strenuous.

# data[].attributes.body
The Confederate Congress passes a Retaliatory Act in line Jefferson Davis' earlier proclamation and in response to the Emancipation Proclamation. The act establishes that the Confederacy considers the enlistment of black troops to be the equivalent of inciting a servile rebellion, white officers of black troops are to be executed, and black troops taken prisoner are to be sent to the states, where they could be executed or re-enslaved.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Your browser does not support script The Emancipation Proclamation Page overview: click on a link to go directly to a discussion of that topic below. Even after the outbreak of the Civil War, Lincoln was reluctant to emancipate the slaves, believing that such an act would be unconstitutional, offend the many Northerners who opposed abolition, and persuade border states to join the secession.

# data[].attributes.body
Abraham Lincoln is nominated for a second term as president.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was the least known of all of the contenders for the Republican Party's nomination for president. Heading the list was former New York Governor William H. Seward, with the politically awkward Governor Salmon P. Chase of Ohio a distant second. Conservative Edward Bates of Missouri was considered too old, and many Republicans seemed uncomfortable with the popular but unpredictable Horace Greeley, founder and editor of the New York Tribune.

To overcome his disadvantage, Lincoln adopted an unobtrusive publicity campaign. The timely release of his published debates with Stephen A. Douglas and brief autobiographies and a carefully orchestrated speaking campaign in New York and parts of New England all worked to Lincoln's advantage. The nomination and the subsequent campaign were left largely to trusted handlers, but even after his election was secure, Lincoln maintained a dogged silence on national issues prior to his inauguration.

Road to the Nomination

Lincoln's remarkable performance in a series of seven debates with Senator Douglas drew the attention of Republican Party leaders in New York and New England. Invited East to speak, Lincoln delivered one of the best speeches of his career at Manhattan's famous Cooper Union. Horace Greeley immediately reproduced the speech in his widely read New York Tribune, and Lincoln began to be thought of as a potential presidential candidate. With the help of able advisors, Lincoln orchestrated a successful campaign for the 1860 Republican nomination for president.

Abraham Lincoln to Mary Todd Lincoln

Inspired by newspaper accounts of Lincoln's Cooper Union Address, New England Republicans asked Lincoln to speak in their states. He made a whirlwind tour, appearing in eleven cities in twelve days. Lincoln's frustration at having to prepare at least nine different speeches during his tightly packed campaign through New England is clearly evident in this letter to Mary Todd. He was not accustomed to such sophisticated audiences who would have read his prior speeches in newspapers. His reputation with words preceded him and he worried that he might have little new to say.

The Republican Convention of 1860

The first national political convention held in Chicago, Illinois, took place at what was called the "Wigwam"-a nineteenth century colloquialism for the headquarters of a political campaign. In May 1860, some 12,000 Republican delegates and spectators crowded into the two-story rectangular structure, shown here, to select their candidate for president in the fall election. Music publisher Oliver Ditson and Company of Boston, Massachusetts, produced the "The 'Wigwam' Grand March" after Abraham Lincoln won the Republican Party nomination for president. During the Civil War, Ditson released a number of popular songs, including the "Battle Hymn of the Republic."

Lincoln Accepts the Nomination

A former Whig, George Ashmun served with Lincoln in the 30 th United States Congress. As president of the Republican National Convention of 1860, it was Ashmun's responsibility to inform Lincoln that he was the party's choice as candidate for president. The extreme formality of Lincoln's letter of acceptance indicates that the news had a sobering effect on him.

Front Porch Campaign

In the early- and mid-nineteenth century, tradition dictated that presidential candidates maintain a dignified silence in national elections because they supposedly were above the rough and tumble world of politics. Republican Party supporters delivered Lincoln's message to the voters, and that message was to stop the spread of slavery in the Western territories. Great emphasis was also placed on Lincoln's frontier experience, which showed that even the poorest citizen could work his way to the top. Republican Party offices throughout the North distributed thousands of campaign posters, leaflets, and newspaper editorials. They did virtually no campaigning in the South, where Lincoln's name did not even appear on a majority of the ballots.

Abraham Lincoln Replies to a Political Rival

Cassius Clay, an enthusiastic but undisciplined Kentucky abolitionist, thought he should be the next president of the United States. Clay would have settled for vice president, but he accepted the fact that the party needed an Eastern Democrat to balance the ticket. Aware that Clay lacked the necessary judgment to manage either office effectively, Lincoln sidestepped Clay's direct solicitation for a prominent place in the possible future Republican administration.
Read the transcript
Presidential Hopes

In this letter to a trusted friend from Springfield, Lincoln expressed great optimism about his chances of success in the upcoming presidential election. However, the uncertain future of the nation weighed heavily upon his mind. One month later, Preston Butler took this photograph of Lincoln at his studio on Adams Street at the request of Philadelphia artist John Henry Brown. As others had before him, Brown observed that Lincoln's sunken cheeks, deep-set eyes, and large ears and nose created a stern look, masking a warm and genial nature that quickly became evident in his lively conversation and story telling.

Lincoln Avoids Becoming a Target of Controversy

George Prentice, a staunch Whig and Unionist, edited the Louisville Journal. Anticipating Lincoln's election as president, Prentice had earlier encouraged Lincoln to stem the tide of secession by publishing a letter "setting forth your conservative views and intentions." Prentice hoped such a letter would take away from secessionists "every excuse or pretext for treason." Convinced that anything further he might say on the subject would be deliberately misconstrued, Lincoln refused the request.

Republican Nominee Shows Humility

William D. Kelley, a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, attorney and judge, served as a delegate to the 1860 Republican National Convention in Chicago. Kelley joined Lincoln in Washington in 1861 as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, an office he continued to hold until his death in 1890. In responding to Kelley's offer to inscribe his two-volume work on international law to Lincoln, the Republican nominee for president showed that he had not lost sight of his humble origins.
Read the transcript
Campaign Buttons from 1860

In 1860, after the invention of the economical tintype process, candidates' images appeared on campaign buttons for the first time. The buttons shown here display a portrait of Lincoln on one side and an image of vice-presidential candidate Hannibal Hamlin on the reverse.

Lincoln's Autobiographical Notes

Abraham Lincoln was reluctant to speak or write about his childhood, and it was reportedly only out of gratitude for the support of John L. Scripps's employer, the Chicago Press & Tribune, that he penned fourteen pages of autobiographical notes. Lincoln stressed his poor and humble beginnings, and he resisted all attempts at political glamorization. Scripps's thirty-two-page campaign biography was published simultaneously in pamphlet form by the Press & Tribune and Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, under slightly different titles.

Election: Celebration and Trepidation

Lincoln's 1860 election victory was marred by the quick secession of seven Southern states-South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas-which, in February 1861, declared themselves to be a new nation, the Confederate States of America. Although urged to address the growing crisis of Union, Lincoln declined, explaining that he had written and spoken often on the subject, and that further explanation of his position on slavery would only be misconstrued. He hoped that Southern Unionists would prevail as they had done in past crises and restore their states to the Union. However, with a few notable exceptions, Southerners united behind secession.

Chase Offers Congratulations

Governor and Senator Salmon P. Chase of Ohio undermined his pursuit of the Republican nomination for president in 1860 because of his radical abolitionist stance. Although Lincoln invited Chase into his Cabinet, he kept a wary eye on the overly ambitious Secretary of the Treasury. Chase's congratulatory note to Lincoln as president-elect is as much a declaration of his personal agenda as an assurance of support.

Union Dissolved!

Propelled by such men as Robert Barnwell Rhett Sr., owner of the Charleston Mercury, who had long promoted secession, the South moved swiftly after Lincoln's election. The South Carolina legislators authorized the appointment of delegates to a convention to consider whether the state should remain in the Union. That convention, which opened in Columbia before moving to Charleston, wasted little time in adopting an "Ordinance of Secession." The ordinance was passed, 169 to 0. This announcement by the Charleston Mercury appeared on the city streets within minutes of the final vote. Four days later the South Carolina legislature passed a more formal "Declaration of Secession."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition The Run for President

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was the least known of all of the contenders for the Republican Party's nomination for president. To overcome his disadvantage, Lincoln adopted an unobtrusive publicity campaign. The nomination and the subsequent campaign were left largely to trusted handlers, but even after his election was secure, Lincoln maintained a dogged silence on national issues prior to his inauguration.

# data[].attributes.body
The Battle of Nashville, Tennessee. The Confederate Army under John Bell Hood is thoroughly defeated and the threat to Tennessee ends.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Confederate General John Bell Hood participated in some of the most brutal and iconic actions of the Civil War, including the breakthrough at Gaines' Mill, the hellacious fighting at the Cornfield at Antietam, and the drive to Snodgrass Hill at Chickamauga.

# data[].attributes.headline
Assertion: Which of these events is the strongest turning point in your movement?

# data[].attributes.subject
Assertion: Which of these events is the strongest turning point in your movement?

# data[].attributes.body
The event that was the strongest turning point in my movement was probably the Battle of Gettysburg (Pennsylvania), July 1-3, and the Fall of Vicksburg (Mississippi), July 4.