Ch 14: The Civil War.

Letter1: JLC to Fannie, 1/1/1863

Chemberlain wrote the letter to express how he loved his wife. He said he alway carried the letters that his wife wrote to him. When he after some dangerous situations such as the terrible fight and the subsequent dangers, he would missed his wife and his children more. At that time, he had to take out and read again the letters to stop the thirst, because he knew he had no idea. Moreover, he mentioned that his division had been on the Rappahannock. His division was waiting an exciting time that the power source would be cut off in a dozen miles region away from his home. He worried about his wife and his children, and he expected he could accompany them in the darkness time. At the end of this letter, he wished God bless his wife, and he expressed how he loved and cherished his sweet wife.

Letter2: JLC to Fannie 1/5/1863

Lincoln missed his wife in a nice night time. Lincoln started his letter with a description of the night environment. In that nice time, he was surrounded by the rich, entrancing and melting bank music. He felt everything at once. He wished one foolish girl-his wife were there. He said to his wife that he really felt lonely. He missed and loved his wife, but he was stupid in emotion expression.

1863, Lincoln's proclamation made after a crucial victory at Antietam, allowed Lincoln to push for something radical; frees all slaves in areas under rebellion; this excludes the border states, keeping them on the side of the union, prevents foreign powers from entering the war for slavery, provides a rationale for the war, and allows blacks to enlist in the army.

5 political parties supported candidates for the presidency: War Democrats, Peace Democrats, Copperheads, Radical Republicans, & National Union Party; each political party offered a diff. point of view on how the war should be run & what should be done to the Confederate states after the war; National Union Party joined w/ Lincoln, who won the election on the recent northern victories against the South; decided that the Confederacy would lose & that slavery was dead. Major players: Lincoln v. McClellan.

Ch 13: A House Divided.

A short-lived political party in the United States active in the 1848 and 1852 presidential elections, and in some state elections. Founded in Buffalo, New York, it was a third party and a single-issue party that largely appealed to and drew its greatest strength from New York State. The party leadership consisted of former anti-slavery members of the Whig Party and the Democratic Party. Its main purpose was opposing the expansion of slavery into the western territories, arguing that free men on free soil comprised a morally and economically superior system to slavery. They opposed slavery in the new territories (agreeing with the Wilmot proviso) and sometimes worked to remove existing laws that discriminated against freed African Americans in states such as Ohio.

Created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, opening new lands for settlement, and had the effect of repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820 by allowing white male settlers in those territories to determine through popular sovereignty whether they would allow slavery within each territory. The act was designed by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. The initial purpose of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was to open up many thousands of new farms and make feasible a Midwestern Transcontinental Railroad. It became problematic when popular sovereignty was written into the proposal so that the voters of the moment would decide whether slavery would be allowed. The result was that pro- and anti-slavery elements flooded into Kansas with the goal of voting slavery up or down, leading to a bloody civil war there.

An American political movement that operated on a national basis during the mid 1850s. It promised to purify American politics by limiting or ending the influence of Irish Catholics and other immigrants, thus reflecting nativism and anti-Catholic sentiment. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants, whom they saw as hostile to republican values and controlled by the pope in Rome. Mainly active from 1854 to 1856, it strove to curb immigration and naturalization, but met with little success. Membership was limited to Protestant males. There were few prominent leaders, and the largely middle-class membership fragmented over the issue of slavery.

A landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court held that African Americans, whether slave or free, could not be American citizens and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court,[2][3] and that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the federal territories acquired after the creation of the United States. Dred Scott, an African American slave who had been taken by his owners to free states and territories, attempted to sue for his freedom. In a 7-2 decision written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, the Court denied Scott's request and in doing so, ruled an Act of Congress to be unconstitutional for the second time in its history.