Frémont was one of the first two senators from California, serving only a few months, from 1850 to 1851. He had previously served as Military Governor of California in 1847.
Frémont was the first presidential candidate of the new Republican Party in 1856. It used the slogan "Free Soil, Free Men, and Frémont" to crusade for free farms (homesteads) and against the Slave Power. As was typical in presidential campaigns, the candidates stayed at home and said little. The Democrats meanwhile counter-crusaded against the Republicans, warning that a victory by Frémont would bring civil war. They also raised a host of issues, alleging Frémont was a Catholic and had a poor military record. Frémont's powerful father-in-law, Senator Benton, praised Frémont but announced his support for the Democratic candidate James Buchanan.
At the time of his campaign he lived in Staten Island, New York. The campaign was headquartered near his home in St. George.[26] He placed second to James Buchanan in a three-way election; he did not carry the state of California.
This caricature tries to link Frémont to other "strange" movements like temperance, feminists, socialism, free love, Catholicism and abolitionism.He later served as Governor of the Arizona Territory for several years, though he spent little time in the territory; he was asked to resume his duties or resign, and chose resignation.
Civil War Frémont later served as a major general in the American Civil War, including a controversial term as commander of the Army's Department of the West from May to November 1861. Frémont replaced William S. Harney, who had negotiated the Harney-Price Truce, which permitted Missouri to remain neutral in the conflict as long as it did not send men or supplies to either side.
Frémont ordered his Gen. Nathaniel Lyon to formally bring Missouri into the Union cause. Lyon had been named the temporary commander of the Department of the West, before Frémont ultimately replaced Lyon. Lyon, in a series of battles, evicted Gov. Claiborne Jackson and installed a pro-Union government. After Lyon was killed in the Battle of Wilson's Creek in August, Frémont imposed martial law in the state, confiscating secessionists' private property and emancipating slaves.
John C. Frémont Pres. Abraham Lincoln, fearing the order would tip Missouri (and other slave states in Union control) to the southern cause, asked Frémont to revise the order. Frémont refused to do so, and sent his wife to plead the case. Lincoln responded by publicly revoking the proclamation and relieving Frémont of command on November 2, 1861, simultaneous to a War Department report detailing Frémont's iniquities as a major general. In March 1862 he was placed in command of the Mountain Department of Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky.
Early in June 1862 Frémont pursued the Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson for eight days, finally engaging him at Battle of Cross Keys on June 8. Jackson slipped away after the battle, saving his army.
When the Army of Virginia was created June 26, to include Gen. Frémont's corps, with John Pope in command, Frémont declined to serve on the grounds that he was senior to Pope and for personal reasons. He then went to New York where he remained throughout the war, expecting a command, but none was given to him.
Radical Republican presidential candidacy
In 1860 the Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln for president, who won the presidency and then ran for reelection in 1864. The Radical Republicans, a group of hard-line abolitionists, were upset with Lincoln's positions on the issues of slavery and post-war reconciliation with the southern states. On May 31, 1864, they nominated Frémont for president. This frisson in the Republican Party divided the party into two factions: the anti-Lincoln Radical Republicans, who nominated Frémont, and the pro-Lincoln Republicans. Frémont abandoned his political campaign in September 1864, after he brokered a political deal in which Lincoln removed Postmaster General Montgomery Blair from office.
Thanks to Lurker for ponting out HE was actually the first Republican presidential Candidate... Lincoln was the first Republican president.
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01:42 AM
Gall757 Member
Posts: 10938 From: Holland, MI Registered: Jun 2010
As for the influence of the cotton gin on slavery, B B King said he picked cotton as a kid......but you may want to toss a grain of salt on that.....he's a good song writer.
[This message has been edited by Gall757 (edited 03-01-2011).]
As for the influence of the cotton gin on slavery, B B King said he picked cotton as a kid......but you may want to toss a grain of salt on that.....he's a good song writer.
Oh I believe it, Cotton was still being hand picked in some places into the 60s.
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If you want to know some cool stuff about the American Civil War, I recommend you watch the above video. I could listen to Shelby Foote talk all day. R.I.P.
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1861 - In Washington, inauguration ceremonies for President Lincoln were held.
Excerpt from his innaugural address:
"....Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? In our present differences, is either party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of Nations, with His eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people.
By the frame of the Government under which we live this same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief, and have with equal wisdom provided for the return of that little to their own hands at very short intervals. While the people retain their virtue and vigilance no Administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can very seriously injure the Government in the short space of four years.
My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new Administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty.
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 can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. 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."
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. "
1865 - U.S. President Lincoln began his second term as the 16th President of the United States. This is the last picture ever made of Lincoln. The glass negative had cracked and was discarded, it was thought there would be plenty of time in the next 4 years to take another.
From Lincoln's second innaugural address:
"At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.
"Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
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, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
Within six weeks the war was over and Lincoln had been assassinated.
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1861 - A Confederate Convention was held in Montgomery, Alabama, where a new constitution was adopted.
1862 - U.S. President Lincoln issued War Order No. 3. The move made several changes to the Union command structure. Three departments were created with Henry "Old Brains" Halleck in charge of the west, John C. Frémont in command of troops in the Appalachian region, and George McClellan in the east.
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02:29 PM
Gall757 Member
Posts: 10938 From: Holland, MI Registered: Jun 2010
It turns out that Fremont thought he was a czar and wouldn't do what Lincoln wanted him to, McClellan loved his men too much to start a battle, and Halleck never wanted to change a thing.....maybe they were giving Lincoln gray hairs.....
is that picture real? no wonder he wore a hat all the time.
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." - The 13th Amendment from the U.S. Constitution (ratified December 6, 1865).
1862 - Confederate General Henry Hopkins Sibley was defeated at the Battle of Glorietta Pass. Sibley's men had come up the Rio Grande and within a few weeks had captured Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
1865 - At City Point, Virginia, U.S. President Lincoln met with Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman and Admiral David Dixon Porter to discuss the final steps at wrapping up the war.
The next week is big for Civil War history. Today:
1862 - Union General Ulysses S. Grant pushed the Confederates, now under General Pierre G. T. Beauregard, back to Corinth. The previous day Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston had conducted a surprise attack that forced Union troops back to Shiloh. (Battle of Shiloh)
On this morning, General Lee ordered General John B. Gordon to try and break out one final time in hopes of linking up with Joe Johnston and the Army of the Tennessee. It was the final engagement of Confederate States Army General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia before it surrendered to the Union Army under Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, and one of the last battles of the American Civil War.
Lee, having abandoned the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, after the Siege of Petersburg, retreated west, hoping to join his army with the Confederate forces in North Carolina. Union forces pursued and cut off the Confederate retreat. Lee's final stand was at Appomattox Court House, where he launched an attack to break through the Union force to his front, assuming the Union force consisted entirely of cavalry. When he realized that the cavalry was backed up by two corps of Union infantry, he had no choice but to surrender.
At Appomattox Court House, Virginia, General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Confederate Army to Union General Ulysses S. Grant . Grant allowed Rebel officers to keep their sidearms and permitted soldiers to keep their horses and mules. Though there were still Confederate armies in the field, the war was officially over. The four years of fighting had killed 360,000 Union troops and 260,000 Confederate troops.
The building that housed both Generals as the surrender was documented and signed belonged to one Wilmer McLean, a wholesale grocer from Virginia. It is said that the American Civil War started in Wilmer McLean's front yard and ended in his front parlor.
The initial engagements on July 18, 1861, in what would become the First Battle of Bull Run, fought on July 21, took place on McLean's farm, the Yorkshire Plantation, in Manassas, Prince William County, Virginia. Union Army artillery fired at McLean's house, headquarters for Confederate Brigadier General P.G.T. Beauregard, and a cannonball dropped through the kitchen fireplace. Beauregard wrote after the battle, "A comical effect of this artillery fight was the destruction of the dinner of myself and staff by a Federal shell that fell into the fire-place of my headquarters at the McLean House."
McLean was a retired major in the Virginia militia; but at 47, he was too old to return to active duty at the outbreak of the Civil War; he made his living during the war as a sugar broker supplying the Confederate States Army. He decided to move because his commercial activities were centered mostly in southern Virginia and the Union army presence in his area of northern Virginia made his work difficult. He undoubtedly was also motivated by a desire to protect his family from a repetition of his battle experience. In the spring of 1863 he and his family moved about 120 miles (200 km) south to Appomattox County, Virginia; near a dusty, crossroads community called Appomattox Court House.
On April 9, 1865, the war came back to Wilmer McLean when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant in the parlor of McLean's house near Appomattox Court House, effectively ending the Civil War. Later, McLean is supposed to have said "The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor".
[This message has been edited by tbone42 (edited 04-09-2011).]
At 4:30 am, EST, marks the 150th anniversary of the innauguration of Civil War in the United States from 1861 to 1865.
Fort Sumter and the start of the War, 150 Years ago today.
The Battle of Fort Sumter (April 12–13, 1861) was the bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter, near Charleston, South Carolina, that started the American Civil War. Following declarations of secession by seven Southern states, South Carolina demanded that the U.S. Army abandon its facilities in Charleston Harbor. On December 26, 1860, U.S. Major Robert Anderson surreptitiously moved his small command from the indefensible Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island to Fort Sumter, a substantial fortress controlling the entrance of Charleston Harbor. An attempt by U.S. President James Buchanan to reinforce and resupply Anderson, using the unarmed merchant ship Star of the West, failed when it was fired upon by shore batteries on January 9, 1861. South Carolina authorities then seized all Federal property in the Charleston area, except for Fort Sumter.
During the winter months of 1861, the situation around Fort Sumter increasingly began to resemble a siege. In March, Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, the first general officer of the newly formed Confederate States of America, was placed in command of Confederate forces in Charleston. Beauregard energetically directed the strengthening of batteries around Charleston harbor aimed at Fort Sumter. Conditions in the fort grew dire as the Federals rushed to complete the installation of additional guns. Anderson was short of men, food, and supplies.
Confederate General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard
Union General Robert Anderson, who was Beauregard's academy instructor in Artillery
The resupply of Fort Sumter became the first crisis of the administration of President Abraham Lincoln. He notified the Governor of South Carolina, Francis W. Pickens, that he was sending supply ships, which resulted in an ultimatum from the Confederate government: evacuate Fort Sumter immediately. Major Anderson refused to surrender. Beginning at 4:30 a.m. on April 12, the Confederates bombarded the fort from artillery batteries surrounding the harbor. Although the Union garrison returned fire, they were significantly outgunned and, after 34 hours, Major Anderson agreed to evacuate. There was no loss of life on either side as a direct result of this engagement, although a gun explosion during the surrender ceremonies on April 14 caused two Union deaths.
Following the battle, there was widespread support from both North and South for further military action. Lincoln's immediate call for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the rebellion resulted in an additional four states also declaring their secession and joining the Confederacy. The Civil War had begun.
[This message has been edited by tbone42 (edited 04-12-2011).]
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12:55 AM
Apr 13th, 2011
avengador1 Member
Posts: 35467 From: Orlando, Florida Registered: Oct 2001
One hundred fifty years after the Civil War began, we’re still fighting it — or at least fighting over its history. I’ve polled thousands of high school history teachers and spoken about the war to audiences across the country, and there is little agreement even about why the South seceded. Was it over slavery? States’ rights? Tariffs and taxes?
As the nation begins to commemorate the anniversaries of the war’s various battles — from Fort Sumter to Appomattox — let’s first dispense with some of the more prevalent myths about why it all began.
1. The South seceded over states’ rights.
Confederate states did claim the right to secede, but no state claimed to be seceding for that right. In fact, Confederates opposed states’ rights — that is, the right of Northern states not to support slavery.
On Dec. 24, 1860, delegates at South Carolina’s secession convention adopted a “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union.” It noted “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery” and protested that Northern states had failed to “fulfill their constitutional obligations” by interfering with the return of fugitive slaves to bondage. Slavery, not states’ rights, birthed the Civil War.
South Carolina was further upset that New York no longer allowed “slavery transit.” In the past, if Charleston gentry wanted to spend August in the Hamptons, they could bring their cook along. No longer — and South Carolina’s delegates were outraged. In addition, they objected that New England states let black men vote and tolerated abolitionist societies. According to South Carolina, states should not have the right to let their citizens assemble and speak freely when what they said threatened slavery.
Other seceding states echoed South Carolina. “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world,” proclaimed Mississippi in its own secession declaration, passed Jan. 9, 1861. “Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of the commerce of the earth. . . . A blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.”
The South’s opposition to states’ rights is not surprising. Until the Civil War, Southern presidents and lawmakers had dominated the federal government. The people in power in Washington always oppose states’ rights. Doing so preserves their own.
2. Secession was about tariffs and taxes.
During the nadir of post-civil-war race relations — the terrible years after 1890 when town after town across the North became all-white “sundown towns” and state after state across the South prevented African Americans from voting — “anything but slavery” explanations of the Civil War gained traction. To this day Confederate sympathizers successfully float this false claim, along with their preferred name for the conflict: the War Between the States. At the infamous Secession Ball in South Carolina, hosted in December by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, “the main reasons for secession were portrayed as high tariffs and Northern states using Southern tax money to build their own infrastructure,” The Washington Post reported.
These explanations are flatly wrong. High tariffs had prompted the Nullification Controversy in 1831-33, when, after South Carolina demanded the right to nullify federal laws or secede in protest, President Andrew Jackson threatened force. No state joined the movement, and South Carolina backed down. Tariffs were not an issue in 1860, and Southern states said nothing about them. Why would they? Southerners had written the tariff of 1857, under which the nation was functioning. Its rates were lower than at any point since 1816.
3. Most white Southerners didn’t own slaves, so they wouldn’t secede for slavery.
Indeed, most white Southern families had no slaves. Less than half of white Mississippi households owned one or more slaves, for example, and that proportion was smaller still in whiter states such as Virginia and Tennessee. It is also true that, in areas with few slaves, most white Southerners did not support secession. West Virginia seceded from Virginia to stay with the Union, and Confederate troops had to occupy parts of eastern Tennessee and northern Alabama to hold them in line.
However, two ideological factors caused most Southern whites, including those who were not slave-owners, to defend slavery. First, Americans are wondrous optimists, looking to the upper class and expecting to join it someday. In 1860, many subsistence farmers aspired to become large slave-owners. So poor white Southerners supported slavery then, just as many low-income people support the extension of George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy now.
Second and more important, belief in white supremacy provided a rationale for slavery. As the French political theorist Montesquieu observed wryly in 1748: “It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures [enslaved Africans] to be men; because allowing them to be men, a suspicion would follow that we ourselves are not Christians.” Given this belief, most white Southerners — and many Northerners, too — could not envision life in black-majority states such as South Carolina and Mississippi unless blacks were in chains. Georgia Supreme Court Justice Henry Benning, trying to persuade the Virginia Legislature to leave the Union, predicted race war if slavery was not protected. “The consequence will be that our men will be all exterminated or expelled to wander as vagabonds over a hostile earth, and as for our women, their fate will be too horrible to contemplate even in fancy.” Thus, secession would maintain not only slavery but the prevailing ideology of white supremacy as well.
Since the Civil War did end slavery, many Americans think abolition was the Union’s goal. But the North initially went to war to hold the nation together. Abolition came later.
On Aug. 22, 1862, President Lincoln wrote a letter to the New York Tribune that included the following passage: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”
However, Lincoln’s own anti-slavery sentiment was widely known at the time. In the same letter, he went on: “I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.” A month later, Lincoln combined official duty and private wish in his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
White Northerners’ fear of freed slaves moving north then caused Republicans to lose the Midwest in the congressional elections of November 1862.
Gradually, as Union soldiers found help from black civilians in the South and black recruits impressed white units with their bravery, many soldiers — and those they wrote home to — became abolitionists. By 1864, when Maryland voted to end slavery, soldiers’ and sailors’ votes made the difference.
5. The South couldn’t have made it long as a slave society.
Slavery was hardly on its last legs in 1860. That year, the South produced almost 75 percent of all U.S. exports. Slaves were worth more than all the manufacturing companies and railroads in the nation. No elite class in history has ever given up such an immense interest voluntarily. Moreover, Confederates eyed territorial expansion into Mexico and Cuba. Short of war, who would have stopped them — or forced them to abandon slavery?
To claim that slavery would have ended of its own accord by the mid-20th century is impossible to disprove but difficult to accept. In 1860, slavery was growing more entrenched in the South. Unpaid labor makes for big profits, and the Southern elite was growing ever richer. Freeing slaves was becoming more and more difficult for their owners, as was the position of free blacks in the United States, North as well as South. For the foreseeable future, slavery looked secure. Perhaps a civil war was required to end it.
As we commemorate the sesquicentennial of that war, let us take pride this time — as we did not during the centennial — that secession on slavery’s behalf failed.
1865 - The Stars and Stripes was ceremoniously raised over Fort Sumter, South Carolina, the first time since the innauguration of the war four years earlier.
1865 - U.S. President Lincoln and his wife Mary attended the play "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theater. At 10:13 p.m., during the third act of the play, John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln in the head. Lincoln never regained consciousness and died the next morning.
The Death of President Lincoln, 1865 Lincoln awoke the morning of April 14 in a pleasant mood. Robert E. Lee had surrendered several days before to Ulysses Grant, and now Lincoln was awaiting word from North Carolina on the surrender of Joseph E. Johnston. The morning papers carried the announcement that the president and his wife would be attending the comedy, Our American Cousin, at Ford's Theater that evening with General Grant and his wife. At 11 that morning, Lincoln held a meeting with Grant and the Cabinet. After the meeting broke up, Grant gave his regrets that he and his wife could no longer attend the play that evening. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton pleaded with the president not to go out at night, fearful that some rebel might try to shoot him in the street. At lunch he told his wife the news about the Grants, and that he was reluctant to go. Pressing him to maintain their announced plans, they asked Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancee, Clara Harris, to join them.
After an afternoon carriage ride and dinner, Mary complained of a headache and considered not going after all. Lincoln commented that he was feeling a bit tired himself, but he needed a laugh and was intent on going with or without her. She relented. He made a quick trip to the War Department with his body guard, William Crook, but there was no news from North Carolina. While returning to pick up Mary, Crook "almost begged" Lincoln not to go to the theater. He then asked if he could go along as an extra guard. Lincoln rejected both suggestions, shrugging off Crook's fears of assassination. Lincoln knew that a guard would be posted outside their "state box" at the theater.
Arriving after the play had started, the two couples swept up the stairs and into their seats. The box door was closed, but not locked. As the play progressed, police guard John Parker, a notorious drinker, left his post in the hallway leading to the box and went across the street for a drink. During the third act, the President and Mrs. Lincoln drew closer together, holding hands while enjoying the play. Behind them, the door opened and a man stepped into the box. Pointing a derringer at the back of Lincoln's head, he pulled the trigger. Mary reached out to her slumping husband and began shrieking. Now wielding a dagger, the man yelled, "Sic semper tyrannis!" ("Thus always to tyrants"), slashed Rathbone's arm open to the bone, and then leapt from the box. Catching his spur in a flag, he crashed to the stage, breaking his left shin in the fall. Rathbone and Harris both yelled for someone to stop him, but he escaped out the back stage door.
An unconscious Lincoln was carried across the street to the Petersen House and into the room of a War Department clerk. The bullet had entered behind the left ear and ripped a path through the left side of his brain, mortally wounding him. He died the next morning.
Death Scene
Gideon Welles served Lincoln as Secretary of the Navy. On the night of April 14, he was awakened with the news that Lincoln had been shot. Together with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, he rushed to Ford's Theater. They found the area packed with an excited crowd and learned that Lincoln had been taken to a house across the street. Clamoring up the stairs, Welles asked a doctor he recognized about Lincoln's condition. The physician replied that the President might live another three hours. We pick up his story as he enters the room where Lincoln lay:
"The President had been carried across the street from the theater to the house of a Mr. Peterson. We entered by ascending a flight of steps above the basement and passing through a long hall to the rear, where the President lay extended on a bed, breathing heavily. Several surgeons were present, at least six, I should think more. Among them I was glad to observe Doctor Hall, who, however, soon left. I inquired of Doctor Hall, as I entered, the true condition of the President. He replied the President was dead to all intents, although he might live three hours or perhaps longer.
The giant sufferer lay extended diagonally across the bed, which was not long enough for him. He had been stripped of his clothes. His large arms, which were occasionally exposed, were of a size which one would scarce have expected from his spare appearance. His slow, full respiration lifted the clothes with each breath that he took. His features were calm and striking. I had never seen them appear to better advantage than for the first hour, perhaps, that I was there. After that his right eye began to swell and that part of his face became discolored.
Senator Sumner was there, I think, when I entered. If not he came in soon after, as did Speaker Colfax, Mr. Secretary McCulloch, and the other members of the cabinet, with the exception of Mr. Sew- ard. A double guard was stationed at the door and on the sidewalk to repress the crowd, which was of course highly excited and anxious. The room was small and overcrowded. The surgeons and members of the cabinet were as many as should have been in the room, but there were many more, and the hall and other rooms in the front or main house were full. One of these rooms was occupied by Mrs. Lincoln and her attendants, with Miss Harris. Mrs. Dixon and Mrs. Kinney came to her about twelve o'clock. About once an hour Mrs. Lincoln would repair to the bedside of her dying husband and with lamentation and tears remain until overcome by emotion.
A door which opened upon a porch or gallery, and also the windows, were kept open for fresh air. The night was dark, cloudy, and damp, and about six it began to rain. I remained in the room until then without sitting or leaving it, when, there being a vacant chair which some one left at the foot of the bed, I occupied it for nearly two hours, listening to the heavy groans and witnessing the wasting life of the good and great man who was expiring before me.
About 6 A.M. I experienced a feeling of faintness, and for the first time after entering the room a little past eleven I left it and the house and took a short walk in the open air. It was a dark and gloomy morning, and rain set in before I returned to the house some fifteen minutes later. Large groups of people were gathered every few rods, all anxious and solicitous. Some one or more from each group stepped forward as I passed to inquire into the condition of the President and to ask if there was no hope. Intense grief was on every countenance when I replied that the President could survive but a short time. The colored people especially-and there were at this time more of them, perhaps, than of whites - were overwhelmed with grief.
A little before seven I went into the room where the dying President was rapidly drawing near the closing moments. His wife soon after made her last visit to him. The death struggle had begun. Robert, his son, stood with several others at the head of the bed. He, bore himself well but on two occasions gave way to overpowering grief and sobbed aloud, turning his head and leaning on the shoulder of Senator Sumner. The respiration of the President became suspended at intervals and at last entirely ceased at twenty-two minutes past seven"
Secretary Stanton was reported to have said "Now, he belongs to the ages."
Today in Civil War history: 1863 - The Army of Northern Virginia under Stonewall Jackson defeated the Army of the Potomac under General Joseph Hooker. (Battle of Chancellorsville, May 1-4)
Considered Lee's greatest victory, Chancellorsville was the high water mark for the Confederate army. Its where they took the biggest chances against the longest odds and succeeded with stunning results.
It went something like this:
New Union Commander "Fighting" Joe Hooker was feeling around for Lee's flank.. a move Lee had perfected and Hooker was now trying to use against him. On a scouting mission, General J.E.B. Stewarts men had found the Union right flank "Up in the Air", in other words, available to strike with a surprise attack. However, it would take a march over 14 miles through mires, thickets and woods to hit the Union where they were weakest. Lee devised a plan that would divide his already weak army against all military convention and flank the Union with a surprise attack/
Lee assigned the task of "flanking the flankers" to his most succesful general, Stonewall Jackson. Jackson took his entire corps on an extraordinary 20 mile hike around the Union Left. It took most of the afternoon. All the while, nervous Union pickets reported back to their superiors a possible Rebel force moving through the treeline down Tarreyton road. Their reports were ignored by Union High Command, whose response was they were already aware of Lee's movements and movin to pursue what they viewed as a Rebel retreat to protect their supply lines. Of course, in truth, Jackson had led his men on a silent march through thought-to-be impassable terrain to the Union back door.
Just after 5 in the afternoon, Jackson's men began massing at the edge of a clearing only a few hundred yards away from the Union flank, where soldiers were brewing coffee and playing cards, their muskets leaning against barrels and tents, unaware of what was about to hit them.
Jackson gave the order to advance, and 28,000 men came crashing down on the unaware Union troops in the clearing. It was a route. Union forces dropped their weapons and ran for miles while their confederate pursuers were grinding them away with shots in pursuit. However, the action cames so late in the day, Jackson could not push the attack as hard as he might have liked. Lines became tangled and confused, and general AP Hill, who had the freshest troops, denied Jackson total victory and declined further pursuit as a result of these conditions.
Infuriated, Jackson formed his own command party to scout for a night attack on the Union. (A very rare thing in the Civil War.) Not satisfied with a clear path of action, he circled and began riding back to his own lines. Nervous confederate pickets, fired into Jackson's party twice. Although they were yelling that it was their own men the pickets were firing at, it did nt prevent Jackson from being hit. He was given a wound that resulted in need of amputation. His weakness eventually gave way to Pneumonia that led to his death.
The resulting loss in leadership and tactical knowledge would haunt Lee again and again from that point forward, where Jackson's replacements would bungle assignments that Jackson would have known instintively how to execute. The greatest example of this is during the Battle of Gettysburg, where Confederate General Ewell, Jackson's replacement, hesitated to take Little Round Top on day 1, which cost the Confederates complete victory on day 2. Lee himself admited late in his life that if Jackson had been alive at that fight, Confederate victory would have been assured.
[This message has been edited by tbone42 (edited 05-02-2011).]
1864 - Confederate Cavalry General J.E.B. Stuart was mortally wounded at the Battle of Yellow Tavern. He died the next day. Union General George Custer had led the campaign against Stuart. Lee said of Stewart after hearing of him passing: "I can scarcely think of him without weeping." JEB was known for his showy battlefield demeanor, but also for his tenderness of heart and courage. He was a great Cavalry commander, a mighty opponent.
Stuart was one of the most remarkable men the war produced on either side.
From Wiki:
James Ewell Brown "Jeb" Stuart (February 6, 1833 – May 12, 1864) was a U.S. Army officer from Virginia and a Confederate States Army general during the American Civil War. He was known to his friends as "Jeb", from the initials of his given names. Stuart was a cavalry commander known for his mastery of reconnaissance and the use of cavalry in support of offensive operations. While he cultivated a cavalier image (red-lined gray cape, yellow sash, hat cocked to the side with a ostrich plume, red flower in his lapel, often sporting cologne), his serious work made him the trusted eyes and ears of Robert E. Lee's army and inspired Southern morale.
Stuart graduated from West Point in 1854 and served in Texas and Kansas with the U.S. Army, a veteran of the frontier conflicts with Native Americans and the violence of Bleeding Kansas. He participated in the capture of John Brown at Harpers Ferry. Resigning when his home state of Virginia seceded, he served first under Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, but then in increasingly important cavalry commands of the Army of Northern Virginia, playing a role in all of that army's campaigns until his death. He established a reputation as an audacious cavalry commander and on two occasions (during the Peninsula Campaign and the Maryland Campaign) circumnavigated the Union Army of the Potomac, bringing fame to himself and embarrassment to the North. At the Battle of Chancellorsville, he distinguished himself as a temporary commander of the wounded Stonewall Jackson's infantry corps.
Arguably Stuart's most famous campaign, Gettysburg, was marred when he was surprised by a Union cavalry attack at the Battle of Brandy Station and by his separation from Lee's army for an extended period, leaving Lee unaware of Union troop movements and arguably contributing to the Confederate defeat at the Battle of Gettysburg. Stuart received significant criticism from the Southern press as well as the postbellum proponents of the Lost Cause movement, but historians have failed to agree on whether Stuart's exploit was entirely the fault of his judgment or simply bad luck and Lee's less-than-explicit orders.
Thursday May 28 1863 MASSACHUSETTS MEN MAKE MILITARY MARVEL
At first it was unthinkable. Later it was just too risky politically. Finally it seemed inevitable, and so it was done: Black men were allowed to enlist as soldiers in the United States Army. Today the first unit allowed to be recruited was dispatched from its training facility near Boston. They were sent to Hilton Head, S.C, not far from a certain Confederate stronghold known as Fort Wagner. As lead unit in that assault, the 54th Massachussettes infantry experienced massive casulaties (Over 40%) and the loss of all officers, including Colonel Shaw, their white commander.
Movie buffs would recognize this as the basis for "Glory" w/ Matthew Broderick playing Col. Robert Gould Shaw.
After the battle of Fort Wagner, which was never taken by Union Forces throughout the war, Shaw was buried in a mass grave with his black subordinates by Confederates. His father wrote in a letter about the conditions of his burial:
"We would not have his body removed from where it lies surrounded by his brave and devoted soldiers....We can imagine no holier place than that in which he lies, among his brave and devoted followers, nor wish for him better company – what a body-guard he has!"
Today in Civil War history.. the Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men.
General US Grant and his forces in the west were making terrible trouble for confederates near Vicksburg. With that city still intact, the Confederates controlled a vital part of the Mississippi river,, and blocked Union naval reinforcements from joining their comerades in the south, particularly in occupied New Orleans.
Jefferson Davis wanted something done about Grant and called General Lee to his office in the Richmond White House. Davis planned to order Lee to join with Johnston's army of the Tennessee and attack Grant outside Vicksburg. As this would leave Richmond and the peninsula vulnerable to other Union armies, such as the armies of the James and The Potomoc, Lee refused and countered with a bolder plan.
What if the Confederates could take their war to the Yankee invaders? The idea was to go into the Northern states, get inbetween Washington and the army of the Potomoc and make Lincoln sue for peace. Lee proposed just this to President Davis, and Davis agreed. Lee's army of Northern Virginia and all of its corps commanders, as well as other units including many from Texas and the Carolinas would move swiftly toward Washington, and bring the "privations of war" to the Yankee invaders who had for the last two years brought suffering to the South.
Today in 1863, Lee sent the replacement Stonewall Brigade commander "Baldy" Ewell riding north with his command to begin a nearly month long march into Pennsylvania, where both armies would eventually meet in a peaceful hamlet known as Gettysburg in the beginning of July, where the largest battle ever in the history of the Western Hemisphere would be fought.
[This message has been edited by tbone42 (edited 06-04-2011).]
For 3 days, Americans made wholesale slaughter on each other in the rolling pastures of Pennsylvania. 150,000 men, trying to destroy each other, in the largest battle in the history of Earth''s Western Hemisphere. 148 years ago today, Confederate soldiers under General Longstret attempted to unseat General Meade's forces on the Union Left, creating some of the bloodiest fights in the war.
On the far edge of the Union line was Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the 21st Main regiment. Through an unlikely textbook bayonet charge (an obsolete form of attack in this war), Chamerlain was able to defeat Gen Hood's Texans and keep them from flanking the Union army, and possibly destroying it. It is thought that Chamberlain's defense of Little Round Top was the most important action by any soldier in that war, North or South. He very well could have been the winner of the war, if there was one.
Don't know this story? WHY???? Open a book, for God's sake.
That is all, have a great holiday, and remember to charge Little Round Top for me.
1863 - Confederate General Robert E. Lee sent Confederate President Jefferson Davis a letter of resignation as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia after his defeat at Gettysburg. President Davis refused the request by writing "To ask me to substitute you by someone...more fit to command, or who would possess more of the confidence of the army...is to demand an impossibility."
The third day of Gettysburg is the price the South paid to have General Lee as their army's commander. He had come to believe, by the time the battle began, in his own invincibility, and the invincibility of the Army of Northern Virginia. He believed his army could so whatever he asked them to, and up until that point, the record supported his belief.
Lee's terrible temper and willingness to go "all in" was an impediment to Southern efforts for independence. Without this one day of folly, it is surmised by some, our country would now be two countries. (Or more.) It is interesting to theorize "what if's"... What if someone in the South had invented the spencer rifle? What if JEB Stewart had stayed in contct with his commander? What if Lee had taken Longstreet's advice, and re-deployed to a defensive position after the 2nd day of battle in Gettysburg. All these and more, we will never know the outcome. Perhaps it would only served to lengthen on shorten the war with the same end result. Whatever the case, Lee and Northern Virginia would fight on for almost 2 more years before finally surrendering in Appomatox, and returning to the Union possibly its most skilled, veteran unit.
A little late to the game. Noticed nobody mentioned the Declaration of Causes published by Texas when it joined the war on the side of the Confederates in 1861, which said in part:
She was received (into the Confederated States) as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery--the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits--a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.
...
We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.
That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding States.
Texans volunteered for both sides of the war, though mostly for the Confederacy, and suffered an average 20% casualty rate, considered at the time to be shockingly high compared to other states. One unit, the Texas First, suffered over 80% casualties in just one battle at Sharpsburg.
