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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

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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.

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Women in the Civil War - Role, Spies & Soldiers | HISTORY

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Women in the Civil War - Role, Spies & Soldiers | HISTORY

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The American Civil War challenged the ideology of Victorian domesticity and prompted women on both sides to get involved as nurses, fundraisers and soldiers.

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The Union had a population of 22 million while the Confederacy only had 9 million, 3.5 million of them being slaves. Some other advantages was that they had many goods made, had an efficient railroad system, and controlled the Navy. But another thing that both sides had was excellent generals- the Union had Ulysses S. Grant while the Confederacy had had Robert E. Lee & Thomas Jackson. Now for the Confederate advantages. Since the Union was mainly fighting on South's land, they were familiar with the geography climate and more. Two more advantages for the Confederacy was that profitable economy from based on the cotton exports and the farmers had fought better than factory workers because they had tools to attack the "enemy" with.

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Table of Contents

1. Pro- and Anti-Slavery Factions in Congress

2. Maine and Missouri: A Two-Part Compromise

3. Shortcomings of the Missouri Compromise

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was a law that tried to address growing sectional tensions over the issue of slavery. By passing the law, which President James Monroe signed, the U.S. Congress admitted Missouri to the Union as a state that allowed slavery, and Maine as a free state. It also banned slavery from the remaining Louisiana Purchase lands located north of the 36º 30' parallel (the southern border of Missouri). The Missouri Compromise would remain in force for just over 30 years before it was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. In 1857, the Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott decision that the compromise was unconstitutional, setting the stage for the Civil War.

Pro- and Anti-Slavery Factions in Congress

When the Missouri Territory first applied for statehood in 1818, it was clear that many in the territory wanted to allow slavery in the new state. Part of the more than 800,000 square miles bought from France in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, Missouri was known as the Louisiana Territory until 1812, when it was renamed to avoid confusion with the newly admitted state of Louisiana.

Missouri's bid to become the first state west of the Mississippi River, and to allow slavery within its borders, set off a bitter debate in a Congress that was-like the nation itself-already divided into pro- and anti-slavery factions.

In the North, where abolitionist sentiment was growing, many people opposed the extension of the institution of slavery into new territory, and worried that adding Missouri as a slave state would upset the balance that currently existed between slave and free states in the Union. Pro-slavery Southerners, meanwhile, argued that new states, like the original 13, should be given the freedom to choose whether to permit slavery or not.

During the debate, Rep. James Tallmadge of New York proposed an amendment to the statehood bill that would have eventually ended slavery in Missouri and set free the existing enslaved workers living there. The amended bill passed narrowly in the House of Representatives, where Northerners held a slight edge. But in the Senate, where free and slave states had exactly the same number of senators, the pro-slavery faction managed to strike out Tallmadge's amendment, and the House refused to pass the bill without it.

Maine and Missouri: A Two-Part Compromise

After this stalemate, Missouri renewed its application for statehood in late 1819. This time, Speaker of the House Henry Clay proposed that Congress admit Missouri to the Union as a state that allowed slavery, but at the same time admit Maine (which at the time was part of Massachusetts) as a free state.

In February 1820, the Senate added a second part to the joint statehood bill: With the exception of Missouri, slavery would be banned in all of the former Louisiana Purchase lands north of the 36º 30' latitude, which ran along Missouri's southern border.

On March 3, 1820, the House passed the Senate version of the bill, and President James Monroe signed it into law four days later. The following month, the former President Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend that the "Missouri question...like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence."

Shortcomings of the Missouri Compromise

Though the Missouri Compromise managed to keep the peace-for the moment-it failed to resolve the pressing question of slavery and its place in the nation's future. Southerners who opposed the Missouri Compromise did so because it set a precedent for Congress to make laws concerning slavery, while Northerners disliked the law because it meant slavery was expanding into new territory.

In the decades after 1820, as westward expansion continued, and more of the Louisiana Purchase lands were organized as territories, the question of slavery's extension continued to divide the nation. The Compromise of 1850, which admitted California to the Union as a free state, required California to send one pro-slavery senator to maintain the balance of power in the Senate.

In 1854, during the organization of Kansas and Nebraska Territories, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois spearheaded the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which mandated that the settlers of each territory should decide the issue of slavery for themselves, a principle known as popular sovereignty.

The controversial law effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise by allowing slavery north of the 36º 30' parallel. Passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act sparked violence between pro- and anti-slavery settlers in " Bleeding Kansas," delaying Kansas' admission to the Union. Opposition to the act led to the formation of the Republican Party, and the emergence to national prominence of Douglas's Illinois rival, a formerly obscure lawyer named Abraham Lincoln.

Bitter controversy also surrounded the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which ruled that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. According to Chief Justice Roger B. Taney and six other justices, Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the territories, as the Fifth Amendment guaranteed owners of the enslaved could not be deprived of their property without due process of law. The 14th Amendment, passed in 1865 after the conclusion of the Civil War, would later overturn major parts of the Dred Scott decision.

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Missouri Compromise: Date, Definition & 1820 - HISTORY

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The Missouri Compromise, an 1820 law passed amid debate over slavery, admitted Missouri to the Union as a state that allowed slavery, and Maine as a free state.

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People who helped slaves runaway or hide were fined and/or arrested. And because slaves had no rights, fugitives slaves were not able to testify in court to explain why they ran away. The last part of the fugitive slave law is that slaves in the North would be returned to their masters down in the South because there were people in the North that were working for the South help capture slaves.

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Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner were some of the people that did rebellions on and off of the plantation.

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Rebellions on and off the Plantation [ushistory.org]

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In the South, there were mild winters and long,hot, humid summers. And because of the warm weather in the South, it was a perfect place for raising warm- weathered crops because it would've died if were planted farther North where it would've withered and died.And another small reason why it was a good place to grow crops there is because it had plentiful rainfall and long growing seasons. And the last thing about the South is that rivers were good to build towns, especially at the mouth of the river.

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Transportation became a faster way of getting one place to another. Some of the things that helped accomplish that were the steamboats for river travel, and efficient railroad system, and better roads for vehicles.

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In the North, all Northern states experienced all four seasons, including freezing winters to hot humid summers. Another thing about the North is the different areas had distinctive natural features. And the last thing about the North is that they had bays which were used as harbors, which were good for trading

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The abolition movement was a movement that called an end to slavery. In this drawing, you can see that the man in the middle is representing the people who tried to help during the abolition movement.

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Prisoners had to go through harsh conditions. Some people had to be in the same cell as murderers even if they weren't as bad as murderers.

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The Underground Railroad was a vast network that helped slaves from the South escape to freedom.

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The Underground Railroad, a vast network of people who helped fugitive slaves escape to the North and to Canada, was not run by any single organization or person. Rather, it consisted of many individuals -- many whites but predominently black -- who knew only of the local efforts to aid fugitives and not of the overall operation. Still, it effectively moved hundreds of slaves northward each year -- according to one estimate, the South lost 100,000 slaves between 1810 and 1850.

An organized system to assist runaway slaves seems to have begun towards the end of the 18th century. In 1786 George Washington complained about how one of his runaway slaves was helped by a "society of Quakers, formed for such purposes." The system grew, and around 1831 it was dubbed "The Underground Railroad," after the then emerging steam railroads. The system even used terms used in railroading: the homes and businesses where fugitives would rest and eat were called "stations" and "depots" and were run by "stationmasters," those who contributed money or goods were "stockholders," and the "conductor" was responsible for moving fugitives from one station to the next.

For the slave, running away to the North was anything but easy. The first step was to escape from the slaveholder. For many slaves, this meant relying on his or her own resources. Sometimes a "conductor," posing as a slave, would enter a plantation and then guide the runaways northward. The fugitives would move at night. They would generally travel between 10 and 20 miles to the next station, where they would rest and eat, hiding in barns and other out-of-the-way places. While they waited, a message would be sent to the next station to alert its stationmaster.

The fugitives would also travel by train and boat -- conveyances that sometimes had to be paid for. Money was also needed to improve the appearance of the runaways -- a black man, woman, or child in tattered clothes would invariably attract suspicious eyes. This money was donated by individuals and also raised by various groups, including vigilance committees.

Vigilance committees sprang up in the larger towns and cities of the North, most prominently in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. In addition to soliciting money, the organizations provided food, lodging and money, and helped the fugitives settle into a community by helping them find jobs and providing letters of recommendation.

The Underground Railroad had many notable participants, including John Fairfield in Ohio, the son of a slaveholding family, who made many daring rescues, Levi Coffin, a Quaker who assisted more than 3,000 slaves, and Harriet Tubman, who made 19 trips into the South and escorted over 300 slaves to freedom.

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The Underground Railroad, a vast network of people who helped fugitive slaves escape to the North and to Canada, was not run by any single organization or person. Rather, it consisted of many individuals -- many whites but predominently black -- who knew only of the local efforts to aid fugitives and not of the overall operation.

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It was a time when a lot of people drank liquor, and wanted to put an end to it because of the alcohol abuse and the problems created by it. Women took part of this action to stop people from drinking which gave them a voice. One of the last reasons why the people wanted other people to stop drinking liquor is because it was just morally wrong.

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During the 1800's women didn't have the same rights as men, causing their life to become more difficult.

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9930434
English 200A
Winter 2002
Historical Brief-Lives of Women in the early 1800s

Daily life for women in the early 1800s in Britain was that of many obligations and few choices. Some even compare the conditions of women in this time to a form of slavery. Women were completely controlled by the men in their lives. First, by their fathers, brothers and male relatives and finally by their husbands. Their sole purpose in life is to find a husband, reproduce and then spend the rest of their lives serving him. If a woman were to decide to remain single, she would be ridiculed and pitied by the community.
When a women was married, all of her inheritance (if any existed) would belong to her husband. Her husband had rights to everything a woman had, including her body. This notion was supported by both the law as well as the marriage vows: "written into the marriage ceremony was a vow to obey her husband...Not until the late 20th century did women obtain the right to omit that promise from their wedding vows" (Taylor, online). Marriage for these women was a lifetime commitment. Very rarely were women allowed to have a divorce and until 1891 if a woman attempted to flee an unhappy marriage, she could be captured by the law and punished.
Women were broken up into three different classes: Women of the upper-working class, women of the lower-working class, and the underclass women. The divisions of the classes were very distinct, and although none of the women in any of the classes had much power, there were differences in the daily life, family life and working life. The worst off of all of the women were the underclass women. These women maintained a very different lifestyle than the others. Their clothes often consisted of dirty and torn skirts and blouses, and messy hair. Deprived of any form of education and respected jobs, these underprivelged women mostly relied on relief organizations and some even resorted to prostitution to make a living for themselves when there was no other alternative.
The majority of the women belonged in the lower-working class category. With little or no inheritance to look forward to, some women began working between the ages of 8 and 12. Like the underclass women, lower-working class women were often ridiculed by high society because their lives did not permit them to dress with presige and class. Their laborous work schedules did not allow for it. Some of the jobs that were available to them were: domestic service, agricultural laborers, seamstress, washer women, and serving the wealthy residents. Women in this category were expected to fullfil three roles: "mother, housekeeper, and worker" (Huysman, online). Such high expections made for a very high stress environment for these women.
The most presitgious of the classes for British women to fall under was upper-working class. These women were immediately distinguished by their strict clothes that consisted of "laces, corsets, veils, and gloves so that their bodies were properly covered" (Huysman, online). These women often had some sort of inheritance passed down to them from their fathers, so they were often courted by men of high standing who wished to increase their own wealth. Even though women were not yet allowed to attend college, these women sometimes received a general education consisting of reading, writing, and arthmitic. In such cases, a woman might decide to take a position as a governess or a lady's companion.

Questions:
1. What class do you believe the Bennet's fall under? Lower-working class or Upper-working class?

2. Do you believe any of the Bennett girls have received any formal education?

Bibliography

1. Women's Status in Mid 19th Century England: A brief Overview. 16 Jan. 2002. http://members.tripod.co.uk/HastingsHistory/19/overview.htm

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9930434English 200AWinter 2002Historical Brief-Lives of Women in the early 1800s Daily life for women in the early 1800s in Britain was that of many obligations and few choices. Some even compare the conditions of women in this time to a form of slavery. Women were completely controlled by the men in their lives.

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Many Americans wanted to do better in order to please God, so they would have revivals and more.

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The differences of life in the North and South as an African American.

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"Little Women"

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Louisa May Alcott had come to Europe to rest. But even in the Swiss Alps, the author couldn't escape the thing that had exhausted her in the first place: her fans.

Her latest book, Little Women, was a runaway bestseller-and the constant barrage of fan mail, the visits and the demands on her time had wrecked her already delicate health. "Don't send me any more letters from so cracked girls," she begged her mother in a letter from Switzerland in 1870. "The rampant infants must wait."

The "infants" were Louisa's fans, and ever since the publication of Little Women, they had bombarded her with letters asking for a sequel and demanding to know how much of the book was autobiographical-a question readers still pose today. Louisa had captured the world's imagination with her tale of the brave, beloved March family, and Little Women-a book about the Civil War -era lives of Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March, four sisters who struggle with life, love and friendship-has never been out of print. But Louisa's real-life family, upon whom the book was partly based, was infinitely more complicated-and even more interesting.

Born in Pennsylvania in 1832, Louisa May Alcott was one of four sisters, the daughters of Amos Bronson Alcott and Abigail "Abba" Alcott. Bronson, a self-educated Romantic, left his Connecticut home as a teenager to become a Yankee peddler, a type of traveling salesman. Life on the road suited the idealistic, optimistic Bronson, but he was a bad salesman and soon found himself in debt. This began a pattern of financial mismanagement and poverty that would haunt him the rest of his life.

Even though Bronson couldn't handle money, he was passionate and idealistic-high-minded ideals attracted the young Abigail May. Born into relative wealth and social prestige as the daughter of a prominent New England family, Abba was drawn to Bronson's love of education and social justice. The couple married in 1830.

Where Bronson was absent-minded, Abba was practical. When her husband's schools failed because of his controversial, student-focused teaching methods, she lent him moral support. When he infuriated parents by admitting an African-American student to his Boston school, she stood by him. And when he immersed himself in Transcendentalism -a new progressive philosophical movement that emphasized self-reliance, imagination, and creativity-she went right along with him.

Bronson was always in search of ways to put his ideals into action, and in 1843 he picked up his family and began a utopian commune called Fruitlands in Harvard, Massachusetts. It was an unmitigated disaster. Though it was supposed to be a communal farm, Bronson knew nothing about farming and refused to use animals to work the land. The family kept to a vegetarian diet and eschewed all products derived from slave labor. The land was hard to farm and the family nearly starved. Eventually, the experiment strained Abba and Bronson's marriage nearly to a breaking point. Fruitlands failed in 1844 after just eight months.

Louisa would later write a satirical account of her family's time at Fruitlands, called Transcendental Wild Oats. In it, she represents her father as a doomed dreamer whose philosophies are unsuited to the harsh world. "The world was not ready for Utopia yet," she wrote, "and those who attempted to found it only got laughed at for her pains." Privately, though, Louisa was much more negative about Bronson's inability to support his family.

Even after moving back to Concord, Massachusetts, the family struggled with money. Bronson, consumed with causes linked to Transcendentalism and abolitionism, rarely worked, so Abba had to pick up the slack. She became one of America's first professional social workers, and her daughters, Anna, Louisa, Elizabeth and Abigail May, worked as governesses, domestic servants and teachers to help support the family.

Oldest sister Anna, on whom domestic, marriage-minded Meg March of Little Women was based, was a talented actor, but felt her only option was to marry to escape her family's poverty. "I have a foolish wish to be something great and I shall probably spend my life in a kitchen and die in the poor-house," she wrote in her diaries.

Little is known about the inner life of Elizabeth, the third Alcott daughter, who was called "Lizzie" by her family. Her death at age 22 of scarlet fever devastated the Alcotts, and the angelic character of Beth March in Little Women, who, like Lizzie, contracts a fatal illness after helping a poor family, is Louisa's tribute to her sister.

Abigail, better known as May, was the youngest Alcott sister, and she had big ambitions. With the financial assistance of Louisa, who had found success as a writer of short stories, poems and essays, May trained as an artist in Boston and Europe, gaining recognition as a painter and rubbing shoulders with figures like the Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt. In 1877, one of her paintings was displayed in the Paris Salon, and, as one of the few professional women artists of her age, she fought discrimination in her profession and struggled to help other poor women pursue art. Amy March, a self-centered artist who finds love with the family's next-door neighbor in the novel, is based on May.

Though Louisa was just as independent and talented as Jo March, her literary counterpart, her life was marked by struggle and sorrow. During her bout as a Civil War nurse, she was treated with mercury for typhoid. Modern doctors believe she likely suffered from an autoimmune disorder such as lupus, based on photographs that show a rash on her face. Regardless of any health issues, Louisa worked herself to exhaustion trying to provide for her family.

In 1868, Louisa's publisher asked her to write a book for girls. At first, she protested, but her need for money drove her to comply. In a matter of weeks, she dashed off the first volume of Little Women. "I plod away although I don't enjoy this sort of thing," she wrote in her journal at the time. "Never liked girls or knew many, except my sisters, but our queer plays and experiences may prove interesting, though I doubt it."

Louisa's skepticism was unfounded: Little Women was a smash hit. Soon, readers demanded a sequel. Louisa continued the story of Jo and her sisters with a second volume of Little Women that followed the girls into adulthood and marriage. She went on to publish multiple novels for girls, but felt hemmed in by her public image as the beloved author of children's stories. Her adult fiction, which explored quandaries of love, feminism and philosophy, failed to gain a footing, while her health was irrevocably damaged by poverty and the grind of her work life. "Anyone who dreams of wealth and fame might be warned by this story of a woman who struggled so hard to make money that by the time she reached her goal she could not longer appreciate its benefits," writes Louisa's biographer, Susan Cheever writes.

Louisa never regained her health after the success of Little Women, but her later years weren't as dismal as it may seem. When her sister May died in Europe in 1879, Louisa helped raise her daughter, Louisa May Nieriker. Louisa's hard work and passion lived on in her niece-and in the books that survived her. Without her unusual family, there would have been no Louisa May Alcott-an author whose work sprang from an extraordinary life.

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Meet the Real-Life Family Behind "Little Women"

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Louisa May Alcott had come to Europe to rest. But even in the Swiss Alps, the author couldn't escape the thing that had exhausted her in the first place: her fans. Her latest book, Little Women , was a runaway bestseller-and the constant barrage of fan mail, the visits and the demands on her time had wrecked her already delicate health.