...candidates up for election. Breckinridge, Douglas, and Bell identified more with southern ideals than Lincoln. However Douglas hailed and represented the state of Illinois, the same as Abraham Lincoln. Another argument when comparing them all to the future sixteenth president was their individual resumes were filled with war experience, political hierarchy positions and just more time spent in the political sphere than Lincoln. Breckinridge was the current Vice President at the time and was a Mexican American War veteran. Bell served as a representative for Kentucky in the House, and would later be elected the Speaker...
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...The American Civil War was Unavoidable The bloodiest time in history for America was during The American Civil War; a time when Americans fought against themselves for their own rights in which they believed they were entitled to. To many it would be considered shocking and absurd to say the Civil War was something that could have been avoided – and they’re right. The Civil War was an unavoidable and ultimately inevitable conflict that was essential to the evolution of our nation. The differences between the North and the South, economically, geographically, and politically, were major players on why the two divided halves of the America could not prosper together at that time; that and the fact that the previous attempts to compromise on slavery had reached an unavoidable end also made the Civil War an inevitable and undeniable conclusion to the problems brewing between the two sides. There was simply no further room for compromise. There were many differences between the North and the South. The most obvious of which is that the North was, for the most part, industrial; while the South on the other hand was economically dependent of the production of staple crops (primarily cotton). The production of cotton in the South with the advent of the cotton gin soared, causing an increase of labor required; this lead to an increased dependency on slave labor in the south. Slavery was something the North often looked down upon and also held little or no value to them. How could...
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...Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States and is regarded as one of America’s greatest heroes due to both his incredible impact on the nation and his unique appeal. He rose from humble beginnings to achieve the highest office in government. Lincoln’s distinctively humane personality and historical role as savior of the Union and emancipator of the slaves created a legacy that endures. His eloquence of Democracy and insistence that the Union was worth saving embody the ideals of self-government that all nations strive to achieve. He was born in Hardin County, Kentucky to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln. Lincoln and his family moved from place to place due to a land dispute in 1817 when they moved from Kentucky to Perry...
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...Abraham Lincoln, amazingly summarizes Abraham Lincoln’s life story, from birth to death captivating all the nuances that made Abraham Lincoln not only an American hero but also a marvelous sixteenth president. Throughout the book, McPherson pinpoints the significant turning point throughout Lincolns life allowing the reader to fall in love with Abraham Lincoln but also understand completely who Abraham Lincoln was. Uneasily, McPherson navigated through the Civil War explaining how it started and Lincoln’s involvement. James M. McPherson starts off by introducing Abraham Lincoln at birth. Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in Hardin, Kentucky. His father, Thomas Lincoln, was an illiterate farmer who favored labor over education. Consequently, every time Abraham Lincoln indulge himself in a book, his father would criticize his actions and label them as laziness. Abraham’s mother, Nancy Hanks, was no different from Thomas Lincoln reasoning being; they were both illiterate and from a low social class. Although, being from a low...
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...leaders and bloody wars. One of the founders of what makes up our country today was Abraham Lincoln. He was born on February, 12, 1809 in Hardin County, Kentucky. About 20 years later, Lincoln moved and settled in the town of New Salem, Illinois. He was a self-taught lawyer and legislator. Soon he became engaged in local politics. He worked as a supporter of the “Whig Party” and won the election to the Illinois State legislator in 1834. Lincoln was a staunch advocate of internal improvements, a national banking system, and frontier settlement. During his presidency, he continued to support these causes, and implemented policies to further them. He opposed to the idea of spreading slavery to the territories. His vision was to expand the united states with a focus on commerce and cities; rather than agriculture. An unsuccessful bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia later became law during his first term as president. So, generally, with reguard to domestic policy, Lincoln's presidency was of a piece with his previous political activity. The main difference between Lincoln the legislator and Lincoln the president lies in his attitude toward the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. As a Member of Congress, Lincoln had been extremely critical of President Polk's sweeping executive privileges during the Mexican War, arguing that only the legislature had the power to declare and direct the course of war; But during the...
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...Before the outbreak of war in April 1861, the American republic had survived diplomatic and military crises and internal stresses. It weathered tensions with France in the late 1790s, a second war with Britain in 1812–1815, and disputes regarding international boundaries. Political wrangling over economic issues such as the tariff, a national bank, and government-supported public works (called internal improvements in the nineteenth century) proved divisive but posed no serious threat to the integrity of the Union. Despite fissures along ethnic and class lines, the majority of Americans had much in common. They were white, Christian, spoke English, and shared a heritage forged in the crucible of the Revolutionary War. Questions relating to the institution of slavery set the stage for secession and war. Most men and women at the time would have agreed with Abraham Lincoln’s assertion in his Second Inaugural Address that slavery “was, somehow, the cause of the war.” Alexander H. Stephens, the Confederacy’s vice president, minced no words when he proclaimed in March 1861 that slavery “was the immediate cause of the late rupture and the present revolution” to establish southern independence.[1] The framers of the United States Constitution had compromised regarding slavery, creating a democratic republic that sought to ensure its citizenry’s freedoms while also reassuring the South that individual states would have the power to maintain and regulate slavery within their boundaries...
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...Veer Shah AP United States History DBQ Essay #3: “American period between 1860-1880” The historic period prior to the 1860s was the most underlying era in American society as it led to the bloodiest war in the American history, the Civil war. Prior to the Civil war, the American politics were sectionally divided between the Northern Republicans and the Southern Democrats. The political culture was almost saturated as both sections had realized that the numerous compromises would only provoke questions and dissimilarities between them, with the largely interfered question of slavery and suffrage. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had been implemented as a nationwide direction towards admitting states with reference the 36° 30´ latitude line, either as a free-state (above line) or as a slave state (below the line). Despite of the temporary success of the compromise of 1820, it was repealed by the Stephen A. Douglas in 1854 in his Kansas-Nebraska Act. Likewise, the Compromise of 1850, created by the Great Compromiser, Henry Clay, was an effort to preserve the Union by settling the issue of slavery in the newly acquired territories from the Mexican-American War. Although it assured a temporary peaceful settlement between the sections, it failed to give birth to the Civil war and the rise in sectionalism. Although all these compromises had served their desired intents, politically as well as socially, in turn, they only played a catalyst role in increasing the tensions...
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...their inventor with certain unalienable rights." "To an unusual degree," Miller writes, "Lincoln rose to political visibility by moral argument." It is difficult to misrepresent the significance in Lincoln's ethical life story of his 1854 discourse contrary to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which stretched out subjugation to those regions. Lincoln composed that he was “losing interest in politics when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again.” In his location, Lincoln said the...
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...States House of Representatives. During the American Civil War, Henry also served as a general in the Confederate Army. Henry A Wise died on September 12, 1876 from natural causes, he was 69 years old. He was buried at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia. Henry A Wise was married three times throughout the span of his lifetime. In 1828 he married Anne Jennings, while married he and Anne conceived 5 children together. Unfortunately in 1837 she died in a fire along with one of her children. Although his wife and child were dead that didn't stop him from marrying a second time. In November 1840, he married Sarah Sergeant. Henry Wise managed to have fourteen children in the span of 19 years, but only seven survived to see adulthood. Henry and Sarah also had 5 children together....
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...CHAPTER 18: RENEWING THE SECTIONAL STRUGGLE TERMS: Mexican Cession: A major tract of land that Mexico ceded to the United States following the Mexican-America war: included California as well as parts of other Western territories. Fire-Eaters: A general unofficial term used to describe a group of Southern politicians who were extremely in favor of slavery and thus advocated for secession. Underground Railroad: A route that slaves took to secretly escape from their masters to freedom. Harriet Tubman: A particularly famous conductor of the railroad, helping to sneak hundreds of slaves out of servitude. William H. Seward: A somewhat radical politician who advocated for the abolition of slavery on moral grounds. Higher Law: The stance that...
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...Eddie Bjarko Apush Chapter 13 November 23rd, 2014 Expansion War and Sectional Crisis What ideas did the term Manifest Digest reflect? Did it cause historical events such as the new political supports for territorial expansion, or was it merely a description of events? * In 1845, John L. O’Sullivan coined the phrase Manifest Destiny; he felt that Americans had a right to develop the entire continent as they saw fit, which implied a sense of cultural and racial superiority. It was an idea that American settlers were destined to expand throughout the continent. This led to “Oregon fever” The Oregon country stretched along the Pacific coast from the border with Mexican California to the border with Russian Alaska and was claimed by both Great Britain and the United States. “Oregon fever” raged in 1843 as thousands, lured by reports of fine harbors, mild climate, and fertile soil, journeyed for months across the continent to the Willamette Valley. 250,000 Americans had braved the Oregon Trail by 1860; many died en route from disease and exposure, although relatively few died from Indian attacks. Some of those pioneers veered off and went down to California, namely Sacramento River. To promote California’s development, the Mexican government took over the California missions and liberated the 20,000 Indians who worked on them, many of whom intermarried with mestizos and worked as laborers and cowboys on large cattle ranches. The rise of cattle ranching created a new society...
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...American Civil War History Paper The American Civil War (1861–1865) was a civil war between the United States (the "Union") and the Southern slave states of the newly-formed Confederate States of America under Jefferson Davis. The Union included all of the free states and the five slaveholding border states and was led by Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party, which opposed the expansion of slavery into territories owned by the United States. Republican victory in the presidential election of 1860 led seven Southern states to declare their secession from the Union even before Lincoln took office.[1] The Union rejected secession, regarding it as rebellion. Hostilities began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces attacked a U.S. military installation at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Lincoln responded by calling for a large volunteer army, then four more Southern states declared their secession. In the war's first year, the Union assumed control of the border states and established a naval blockade as both sides massed armies and resources. In 1862, battles such as Shiloh and Antietam caused massive casualties unprecedented in U.S. military history. In September 1862, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation made ending slavery in the South a war goal, which complicated the Confederacy's manpower shortages. In the East, Confederate commander Robert E. Lee won a series of victories over Union armies, but Lee's reverse at Gettysburg in early...
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...Unit IV: Continuing Sectionalism, Civil War, And Reconstruction. 1853 To 1877 1. Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854 – A Bill introduced by Steven Douglas to organize the Nebraska territory. He hoped to build a transcontinental railroad making Chicago the terminus, but they could not do this until the Indians were cleared away and the land was in control. Nebraska would presumably become a free state due to the Missouri Compromise but to please the South Douglas argued that the territories should be left open to popular sovereignty. Douglas pushed for the bill and won, therefore the Missouri Compromise was repealed and the North was in an uproar. 2. Birth of the Republican Party- Made up of former Free Soilers, Conscience Whigs, and “Anti-Nebraska” Democrats. Presented themselves as the party of freedom though they were not abolitionist, but they believed that slavery be kept out of the territories. The Republican Party appealed too many to voters who not only disagreed with slavery but also wanted to keep slavery out of their states. 3. Stephan A. Douglas- Known as the “Little Giant,” he was the most prominent spokesman of the Young American movement. He held a series of state offices before being elected for the United States Senate at the age of 29. Douglas wanted to get on with the development of the nation; to build railroads, acquire new territory, and expand trade. This made him suggest and push for the Kansas-Nebraska Act. 4. Popular Sovereignty- Also known as...
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...South began to feel more and more greatly threatened by the North. The South began to become dismayed with the lack of acknowledgement concerning federal control over state rights. Many southern states felt that the new constitution did not fully acknowledge if at all the rights of states to act independently. This was an exponential concern with right of slavery. As America began to expand with the addition of new states from the Louisiana Purchase and the victory of the Mexican War, the fight arose between slave and non-slave state proponents. The Missouri Compromise, Compromise of 1850, and Kansas- Nebraska Act of 1854 were all based around the use or freedom of slaves in new territories causing rising tensions between the North and South. The growth of the Abolition movement twisted the nerves of slave owners throughout the south. The movement was influential for abolitionists against slavery that grew especially after the publishing of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Raid of Harpers Ferry. The election of Abraham Lincoln was the final straw for slave states. Lincoln was seen as an anti-slavery activist, causing the secession South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia,...
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...had conflicting views because slavery became a growing issue. In fact, the main reason for the Union separating was over slavery being illegal or not. The Union broke up under Lincoln’s presidency when South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860 (371). The upper South seceded as well and founded a new country called The Confederate States of America, or the Confederacy. The war begins after they secede. Born Hiram Ulysses Grant, he led the Union to victory in the Civil War and wrote a heroic legacy. Grant fought in the Mexican and Civil wars. At the age of 15, he applied to West Point Military Academy and was barely accepted (Rickarby 6). Due to his background with working with horses, he was an excellent cavalryman. While in the army, he was promoted quickly. For a short period of time, Grant quit the army, yet regretted quickly. He failed at everything he tried before rejoining the army, proving he was meant for the army (Simon 6). He had written an incredible military history, which led him to have a successful presidency and became a phenomenal success. Ulysses Simpson Grant’s tremendous accomplishments during his military service as well as his rewarding presidency qualify him to be an American hero. Successful. This is one word to describe Grant’s military service. Grant’s early war service got him promotions. He entered the military academy with reluctance and little love (Ulysses Simpson Grant...
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