What was the importance of the emancipation proclamation?

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Americans tend to think of the Civil War as being fought to end slavery. Even one full year into the Civil War, the elimination of slavery was not a key objective of the North. Despite a vocal Abolitionist movement in the North, many people and many soldiers, in particular, opposed slavery, but did not favor emancipation. They expected slavery to die on its own over time.

By mid-1862 Lincoln had come to believe in the need to end slavery. Besides his disdain for the institution, he simply felt that the South could not come back into the Union after trying to destroy it. The opposition Democratic Party threatened to turn itself into an antiwar party. Lincoln's military commander, General George McClellan, was vehemently against emancipation. Many Republicans who backed policies that forbid black settlement in their states were against granting blacks additional rights. When Lincoln indicated he wanted to issue a proclamation of freedom to his cabinet in mid-1862, they convinced him he had to wait until the Union achieved a significant military success.

That victory came in September at Antietam. No foreign country wants to ally with a potential losing power. By achieving victory, the Union demonstrated to the British that the South may lose. As a result, the British did not recognize the Confederate States of America, and Antietam became one of the war's most important diplomatic battles, as well as one of the bloodiest. Five days after the battle, Lincoln decided to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, effective January 1, 1863. Unless the Confederate States returned to the Union by that day, he proclaimed their slaves "shall be then, thenceforward and forever free."

It is sometimes said that the Emancipation Proclamation freed no slaves. In a way, this is true. The proclamation would only apply to the Confederate States, as an act to seize enemy resources. By freeing slaves in the Confederacy, Lincoln was actually freeing people he did not directly control. The way he explained the Proclamation made it acceptable to much of the Union army. He emphasized emancipation as a way to shorten the war by taking Southern resources and hence reducing Confederate strength. Even McClellan supported the policy as a soldier. Lincoln made no such offer of freedom to the border states.

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Modern wars are not confined to the battlefield. Americans in the North and South contributed to the war effort unlike civilians of any previous conflict. The political leaders in the Union and Confederacy each had battles of their own to wage. The Civil War would also require a complete revolution in the economies of both regions. The results of such changes would not only determine the outcome of the war, but would utterly transform the new nation politically, socially, and economically.

In the North, President Lincoln had been elected by a minority of voters in his first election and had to continually battle to win reelection. Copperheads, also known as "Peace" Democrats repeatedly thwarted the President's leadership initiatives. In the South, Jefferson Davis was in no easier position. How could a government formed on the basis of states' rights provide the strong, centralized leadership necessary to prevail in war? Davis constantly had to fight with individuals and state legislatures for the power he needed to run the Confederate government.

One of the most important challenges for each leader was foreign relations. If the South could get Britain to support the Confederacy, then maybe, with the most powerful navy in the world, the British could break the Union blockade of Southern ports. This would provide the South with large markets for its cotton and perhaps a source of money large enough to finance the war. Lincoln's job, of course, was to prevent this at all costs. A great game of diplomacy was under way.

As the war progressed, a stark contrast between the two economies emerged. Both the North and the South experienced high rates of inflation, but the South's rate was 80 times greater than in the North. Labor shortages occurred on both sides, as did increasing class conflict between the wealthy and the poor. Since most of the battles in the Civil War took place in the South, great physical destruction was wrought throughout the region, causing mass poverty and despair.

The war also brought significant new roles for Northern and Southern women at home and at work as they replaced almost two million men going off to war. They plowed the fields and did jobs previously done only by the men. Through organization and sheer tenacity they broadened their influence on many problems facing society.

Men were military nurses before this time. It was not considered proper for women to tend to injured and dying men, assisting in operations and care. In fighting for this right, women earned respect and admiration of generals, politicians, and husbands. They would use this success to continue to enlarge their role in the evolving fabric of the nation.

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The end was in sight.

Only Lee's Army of Northern Virginia remained as a substantial military force to oppose the Union Army. For nine months, Grant and Lee had faced each other from 53 miles of trenches during the Siege of Petersburg. Lee's forces had been reduced to 50,000, while Grant's had grown to over 120,000.

The Southern troops began to melt away as the end became clear. On April 2, Grant ordered an attack on Petersburg and broke the Confederate line. Lee and his shrinking army were able to escape.

Lee sent a message to Jefferson Davis saying that Richmond could no longer be defended and that he should evacuate the city. That night Jefferson Davis and his cabinet set fire to everything of military value in Richmond, then boarded a train to Danville, 140 miles to the south. Mobs took over the streets and set more fires. The next day, Northern soldiers arrived. And one day after that, Lincoln visited the city and sat in the office of Jefferson Davis.

Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, now reduced in size to 35,000 troops, had escaped to the west. They were starving, and Lee had asked the Confederate Commissary Department to have rations for his infantry waiting at the Amelia Courthouse. But when he arrived there, no rations awaited his troops, and they were forced to forage the countryside for food. The delay caused by his need to acquire food proved fatal to the Confederate effort.

Now 125,000 Union soldiers were surrounding Lee's army, whose numbers had been reduced to 25,000 troops and were steadily falling. Still, Lee decided to make one last attempt to break out. On April 9, the remaining Confederate Army, under John Gordon, drove back Union cavalry blocking the road near the village of Appomattox Court House. But beyond them were 50,000 Union infantry, and as many or more were closing in on Lee from his rear. It was over.

Lee sent a note to Grant, and later that afternoon they met in the home of Wilmer McLean. Grant offered generous terms of surrender. Confederate officers and soldiers could go home, taking with them their horses, sidearms, and personal possessions. Also, Grant guaranteed their immunity from prosecution for treason. At the conclusion of the ceremony, the two men saluted each other and parted. Grant then sent three day's worth of food rations to the 25,000 Confederate soldiers. The official surrender ceremony occurred three days later, when Lee's troops stacked their rifles and battle flags.

President Lincoln's will to save the Union had prevailed. He looked with satisfaction on the survival of his country and with deep regret on the great damage that had been done. These emotions did not last long, however.

Lincoln had only five days left to live.

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Candace Scott/Ulysses Grant homepage

Only one day after their victory at Gettysburg, Union forces captured Vicksburg, the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River. Lincoln and Union commanders began to make plans for finishing the war.

1. Fully blockade all Southern coasts. This strategy, known as the Anaconda Plan, would eliminate the possibility of Confederate help from abroad.
2. Control the Mississippi River. The river was the South's major inland waterway. Also, Northern control of the rivers would separate Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas from the other Confederate states.
3. Capture Richmond. Without its capital, the Confederacy's command lines would be disrupted.
4. Shatter Southern civilian morale by capturing and destroying Atlanta, Savannah, and the heart of Southern secession, South Carolina.
5. Use the numerical advantage of Northern troops to engage the enemy everywhere to break the spirits of the Confederate Army.

By early 1864, the first two goals had been accomplished. The blockade had successfully prevented any meaningful foreign aid. General Ulysses Grant's success at Vicksburg delivered the Mississippi River to the Union. Lincoln turned to Grant to finish the job and, in the spring of 1864, appointed Grant to command the entire Union Army.

Grant had a plan to end the war by November. He mounted several major simultaneous offensives. General George Meade was to lead the Union's massive Army of the Potomac against Robert E. Lee. Grant would stay with Meade, who commanded the largest Northern army. General James Butler was to advance up the James River in Virginia and attack Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy. General William Tecumseh Sherman was to plunge into the heart of the South, inflicting as much damage as he could against their war resources.

Meade faced Lee's army in Virginia. Lee's strategy was to use terrain and fortified positions to his advantage, thus decreasing the importance of the Union's superiority in numbers. He hoped to make the cost of trying to force the South back into the Union so high that the Northern public would not stand for it. He almost accomplished this. From May 5 to May 24, the full force of Grant's and Lee's armies fought continually with enormous casualties.

But, unlike the Union commanders of the past, Grant had the determination to press on despite the cost. Twenty-eight thousand soldiers were casualties of the Battle of the Wilderness. A few days later, another 28,000 soldiers were casualties in the battle of Spotsylvania Court House. More than two-thirds of the casualties of these battles were Union soldiers.

At Cold Harbor the following week, Grant lost another 13,000 soldiers — 7,000 of them in half an hour. In the 30 days that Grant had been fighting Lee, he lost 50,000 troops — a number equal to half the size of the Confederate army at the time. As a result, Grant became known as "The Butcher." Congress was appalled and petitioned for his removal. But Lincoln argued that Grant was winning the battles and refused to grant Congress's request.

Butler failed to capture Richmond, and the Confederate capital was temporarily spared. On May 6, one day after Grant and Lee started their confrontation in the Wilderness, Sherman entered Georgia, scorching whatever resources that lay in his path. By late July, he had forced the enemy back to within sight of Atlanta. For a month, he lay siege to the city. Finally, in early September he entered Atlanta — one day after the Confederate army evacuated it.

Sherman waited until seven days after Lincoln's hotly fought reelection before putting Atlanta to the torch and starting his march to the sea. No one stood before him. His soldiers pillaged the countryside and destroyed everything of conceivable military value as they traveled 285 miles to Savannah in a march that became legendary for the misery it created among the civilian population. On December 22, Savannah fell.

Next, Sherman ordered his army to move north into South Carolina. Their intent was to destroy the state where secession began. Exactly a month later, its capital, Columbia, fell to him. On the same day, Union Forces retook Fort Sumter.

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Robert E. Lee had a vision.

He proposed to take the offensive, invade Pennsylvania, and defeat the Union Army in its own territory. Such a victory would relieve Virginia of the burden of war, strengthen the hand of Peace Democrats in the North, and undermine Lincoln's chances for reelection. It would reopen the possibility for European support that was closed at Antietam. And perhaps, it would even lead to peace.

The result of this vision was the largest battle ever fought on the North American continent. This was Gettysburg, where more than 170,000 fought and over 40,000 were casualties.

Lee began his quest in mid-June 1863, leading 75,000 soldiers out of Virginia into south-central Pennsylvania. Forty miles to the south of Lee, the new commander of the Union Army of the Potomac, General George Meade, headed north with his 95,000 soldiers. When Lee learned of the approach of this concentrated force, he sent couriers to his generals with orders to reunite near Gettysburg to do battle. As sections of the Confederate Army moved to join together, CSA General A.P. Hill, heard a rumor that that there was a large supply of shoes at Gettysburg. On July 1, 1863, he sent one of his divisions to get those shoes. The battle of Gettysburg was about to begin.

As Hill approached Gettysburg from the west, he was met by the Union cavalry of John Buford. Couriers from both sides were sent out for reinforcements. By early afternoon, 40,000 troops were on the battlefield, aligned in a semicircle north and west of the town. The Confederates drove the outnumbered Union troops to Cemetery Hill, just south of town, where Union artillery located on the hill halted the retreat.

At noon on July 2, the second day of the battle, Lee ordered his divisions to attack, hoping to crumble both sides of the Union line and win the battle. The Big Round Top and Little Round Top were nearby hills that had been left unprotected. If the Confederates could take these positions, they could surround the Union forces.

Union troops under Colonel Joshua Chamberlain arrived just in time to meet Confederate troops charging up the hill to Little Round Top. In some of the most ferocious fighting of the battle, Chamberlain's 20th Maine held on to Little Round Top and perhaps saved the Union from defeat.

Lee was determined to leave Pennsylvania with a victory. On the third day of battle, he ordered a major assault against the center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge. Confederate batteries started to fire into the Union center. The firing continued for two hours. At 3 p.m., 14,000 Confederate soldiers under the command of General George Pickett began their famous charge across three-quarters of a mile of open field to the Union line.

Few Confederates made it. Lee's attempt for a decisive victory in Pennsylvania had failed. He had lost 28,000 troops — one-third of his army. A month later, he offered his resignation to Jefferson Davis, which was refused. Meade had lost 23,000 soldiers.

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The battles that caused the loss of so much life in the Civil War were the results of decisions made by the military commanders of the North and the South. Who were these people? Why did they order the kinds of attacks that characterized this war? How could they follow orders that in many cases seemed like sheer suicide? Many of the opposing officers were actually friends, who had been classmates at West Point and having fought at each other's sides in the US-Mexican War of 1848.

Robert E. Lee was offered the position of commander in chief of the Union Army by President Lincoln before Virginia seceded from the United States. Lee was born into one of the South's most prominent families, and was the son of a Revolutionary War hero. His wife was the granddaughter of Martha Washington.

Lee did not favor either slavery or secession, but joined the Confederate army out of duty to Virginia, which he would not dishonor. Although he was the unquestioned military leader of the South, he was not given charge of the entire Confederate Army until the war's outcome had already been decided. He was a brilliant military strategist, continually outsmarting and defeating opponents with armies much larger than his own.

Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson was an intensely religious man. A former teacher at Virginia Military Institute, he believed the Southern cause was sacred. He was totally fearless in battle. He would drive troops to the point of total exhaustion, seemingly insensitive to their hardship and suffering.

After Jackson won five battles in one month, an aura of invincibility surrounded him. It lasted until his death, in the spring of 1863, during one of his most dramatic victories, the battle of Chancellorsville.

The Union had outstanding officers, but for the first three years of the war, the Union Army had five different commanders. As Lincoln grew impatient with each one's caution or inflexibility, he'd replace him. They simply did not win the decisive battle that Lincoln needed. Ulysses S. Grant was chosen as the general who could finish the job. He had fought in the US-Mexican War and won battles at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in Tennessee during the winter of 1862. Grant had also led the Union troops during the pivotal Vicksburg victory.

For his strategy in those battles, he earned the nickname "Unconditional Surrender" Grant. After he became commander in chief of the Union Army, he doggedly pursued Lee. Grant fought Lee measure for measure and continued to advance, even as Union casualties soared and despite suffering great criticism for those losses.

Grant's most trusted officer, William Tecumseh Sherman, had fought with Grant earlier in the war. Sherman's job was to take Atlanta, an action that was a key part of Lincoln's strategy to conclude the war.

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This photo was taken on the Antietam battlefield in October 1862. A month later, on November 7, 1862 , Lincoln sacked General McClellan and replaced him with General Burnside.McClellan is 4th to the left of President Lincoln.

Click the picture to enlarge. On the far right leaning against a tent is another famous general: George Armstrong Custer

The South was on the move.

In August 1862, a Confederate Army invaded Kentucky from Tennessee. They seized Frankfort and seated a Confederate governor. During that same month, Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had defeated the Union Army again at the Second Battle of Bull Run.

Lee and Jefferson Davis believed that one more successful campaign might bring British and French recognition of the Confederacy. Foreign powers are reluctant to enter a conflict on the losing side. Although Britain and France both saw advantages of a split United States, neither country was willing to support the Confederacy without being convinced the South could win. Lee and Davis were desperately seeking that decisive victory.

Lee wanted to attack the North on its own territory. His target was the federal rail center at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, but the Union General George McClellan was pursuing him. Lee decided to stop and confront the Union Army at Sharpsburg, Maryland. In front of the town ran a little creek called Antietam.

On September 15, Lee deployed his 30,000 soldiers on some four miles of rising ground behind Antietam Creek. He utilized the cover of rock outcroppings, rolling farmland, stone walls, fields of standing corn, and a sunken road in the center of his line.

Two days earlier, a Union corporal had found a copy of Lee's special orders wrapped around three cigars. But McClellan refused to act because he thought Lee's troops outnumbered his own. When McClellan started deploying his troops on September 16, he had 60,000 active soldiers and 15,000 in reserve. Had he thrust his complete force against the Confederates on September 15 or 16, he might have smashed Lee's army.

The battle began early on the morning of September 17 when Union troops under the command of General Joseph Hooker attacked the forces of Stonewall Jackson across a cornfield that lay between them. The fighting was ferocious. The battle surged back and forth across the cornfield 15 times, costing each side nine generals. Within five hours, 12,000 soldiers lay dead or wounded, and the weary opponents stopped fighting for the day.

By midday, the struggle had shifted to a sunken country road between two farms. Two Confederate brigades stood their ground repeatedly as Union soldiers attacked and fell back. Finally, Union attackers assumed a position from which they could shoot down on the Confederate soldiers occupying the road. It was quickly filled with the dead and dying, sometimes two and three deep. The road earned a new name: Bloody Lane. The Confederates fell back, and McClellan again had the opportunity to cut Lee's army in two and ruin it. But McClellan did not follow through, and the battlefield fell silent.

This day sits in history as the bloodiest single day America has ever suffered. Over 22,000 soldiers were killed, wounded, or missing — more than all such casualties during the entire American Revolution. Lee lost a quarter of his army; the survivors headed back to Virginia the next night.

The horror of Antietam proved to be one of the war's critical events. Lee and Davis did not get their victory. Neither Britain nor France was prepared to recognize the Confederacy. Five days after the battle, Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. On November 5, Lincoln, impatient with McClellan's hesitancy, relieved him of command, and replaced him with General Ambrose Burnside.

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The Civil War was fought with awe-inspiring passion.

On the Union side, President Lincoln believed that failure to preserve the Union was a betrayal of the founders of the republic and the promise of the Declaration of Independence. He would not see it "perish from this earth."

Many others in the North echoed similar thoughts. On the day before the first battle of Bull Run, Major Sullivan Ballou of Rhode Island wrote to his wife: "I know how strongly American Civilization now leans on the triumph of the Government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and sufferings of the Revolution." He died one week later in battle.

The cause of union did not drive all Northerners. Abolitionists believed they were acting with divine guidance to fulfill God's will. They would tolerate neither compromise nor legal obstacle. Majority consent was not necessary. Wendell Phillips, a well-known abolitionist, declared, "One, on God's side, is a majority." Abolitionists saw slavery as an affront to God to be ended by any means necessary. Abolitionists incited riots throughout the South that resulted in hundreds of deaths.

Passions raged as hot in the South. Like Lincoln, Jefferson Davis also believed in the Declaration of Independence. He insisted that governments existed with the consent of the governed. Northern interference with popular Southern law was an affront to this ideals.

Robert E. Lee, who did not favor secession, felt that the North was seeking to wrest from the South its dearest rights. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, a devout Presbyterian, believed that the Southern cause was a sacred one. He ascribed his successes to God's will, and preached that religious certitude to his troops.

Many Southerners believed the Northern position was an outright attack on the Southern way of life. They observed that the poverty suffered by Northern industrial workers created living conditions worse than those endured by Southern slaves. They also cited the Bible in defense of plantation life.

Southern legalists believed that the North was undermining the original intent of the Founding Fathers. The cornerstone of the American system was the state government, for which Confederates believed the Northerners had little respect.

Such fiery passions were difficult to reconcile. After decades of compromise attempts, these sacred beliefs finally raged against each other in the cauldron of war.

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When the war began in April 1861, most Americans expected the conflict to be brief.

When President Lincoln called upon the governors and states of the Union to furnish him with 75,000 soldiers, he asked for an enlistment of only 90 days. When the Confederacy moved its capital to Richmond, Virginia, 100 miles from Washington, everyone expected a decisive battle to take place on the ground between the two cities.

In the spring of 1861, 35,000 Confederate troops led by General Pierre Beauregard moved north to protect Richmond against invasion. Lincoln's army had almost completed its 90-day enlistment requirement and still its field commander, General Irvin McDowell, did not want to fight. Pressured to act, on July 18 (three months after the war had begun) McDowell marched his army of 37,000 into Virginia.

Hundreds of reporters, congressional representatives, and other civilians had traveled from Washington in carriages and on horses to see a real battle. It took the Northern troops two and a half days to march 25 miles. Beauregard was warned of McDowell's troop movement by a Southern belle who concealed the message in her hair. He consolidated his forces along the south bank of Bull Run, a river a few miles north of Manassas Junction, and waited for the Union troops to arrive.

Early on July 21, the First Battle of Bull Run began. During the first two hours of battle, 4,500 Confederates gave ground grudgingly to 10,000 Union soldiers. But as the Confederates were retreating, they found a brigade of fresh troops led by Thomas Jackson waiting just over the crest of the hill.

The Battle of Bull Run was also known as the Battle of Manassas Junction. Frequently, major battles had two names. The South named battles after the nearby cities. The North named them after the nearby waterways.

Trying to rally his infantry, General Bernard Bee of South Carolina shouted, "Look, there is Jackson with his Virginians, standing like a stone wall!" The Southern troops held firm, and Jackson's nickname, "Stonewall," was born.

During the afternoon, thousands of additional Confederate troops arrived by horse and by train. The Union troops had been fighting in intense heat — many for 14 hours. By late in the day, they were feeling the effects of their efforts. At about 4 p.m., when Beauregard ordered a massive counterattack, Stonewall Jackson urged his soldiers to "yell like furies." The rebel yell became a hallmark of the Confederate Army. A retreat by the Union became a rout.

Over 4,800 soldiers were killed, wounded, or listed as missing from both armies in the battle. The next day, Lincoln named Major General George B. McClellan to command the new Army of the Potomac and signed legislation for the enlistment of one million troops to last three years.

The high esprit de corps of the Confederates was elevated by their victory. For the North, which had supremacy in numbers, it increased their caution. Seven long months passed before McClellan agreed to fight. Meanwhile, Lincoln was growing impatient at the timidity of his generals.

In many ways, the Civil War represented a transition from the old style of fighting to the new style. During Bull Run and other early engagements, traditional uniformed lines of troops faced off, each trying to outflank the other. As the war progressed, new weapons and tactics changed warfare forever. There were no civilian spectators during the destructive battles to come.

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Within days of the fall of Fort Sumter, four more states joined the Confederacy: Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas. The battle lines were now drawn.

On paper, the Union outweighed the Confederacy in almost every way. Nearly 21 million people lived in 23 Northern states. The South claimed just 9 million people — including 3.5 million slaves — in 11 confederate states. Despite the North's greater population, however, the South had an army almost equal in size during the first year of the war.

The North had an enormous industrial advantage as well. At the beginning of the war, the Confederacy had only one-ninth the industrial capacity of the Union. But that statistic was misleading. In 1860, the North manufactured 97 percent of the country's firearms, 96 percent of its railroad locomotives, 94 percent of its cloth, 93 percent of its pig iron, and over 90 percent of its boots and shoes. The North had twice the density of railroads per square mile. There was not even one rifleworks in the entire South.

All of the principal ingredients of gunpowder were imported. Since the North controlled the navy, the seas were in the hands of the Union. A blockade could suffocate the South. Still, the Confederacy was not without resources and willpower.

The South could produce all the food it needed, though transporting it to soldiers and civilians was a major problem. The South also had a great nucleus of trained officers. Seven of the eight military colleges in the country were in the South.

The South also proved to be very resourceful. By the end of the war, it had established armories and foundries in several states. They built huge gunpowder mills and melted down thousands of church and plantation bells for bronze to build cannon.

The South's greatest strength lay in the fact that it was fighting on the defensive in its own territory. Familiar with the landscape, Southerners could harass Northern invaders.

The military and political objectives of the Union were much more difficult to accomplish. The Union had to invade, conquer, and occupy the South. It had to destroy the South's capacity and will to resist — a formidable challenge in any war.

Southerners enjoyed the initial advantage of morale: The South was fighting to maintain its way of life, whereas the North was fighting to maintain a union. Slavery did not become a moral cause of the Union effort until Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.

When the war began, many key questions were still unanswered. What if the slave states of Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and Delaware had joined the Confederacy? What if Britain or France had come to the aid of the South? What if a few decisive early Confederate victories had turned Northern public opinion against the war?

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It all began at Fort Sumter.

On December 20, 1860, South Carolina seceded from the Union. Five days later, 68 federal troops stationed in Charleston, South Carolina, withdrew to Fort Sumter, an island in Charleston Harbor. The North considered the fort to be the property of the United States government. The people of South Carolina believed it belonged to the new Confederacy. Four months later, the first engagement of the Civil War took place on this disputed soil.

The commander at Fort Sumter, Major Robert Anderson, was a former slave owner who was nevertheless unquestionably loyal to the Union. With 6,000 South Carolina militia ringing the harbor, Anderson and his soldiers were cut off from reinforcements and resupplies. In January 1861, as one the last acts of his administration, President James Buchanan sent 200 soldiers and supplies on an unarmed merchant vessel, Star of the West, to reinforce Anderson. It quickly departed when South Carolina artillery started firing on it.

In February 1861, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as the provisional president of the Confederate States of America, in Montgomery, Alabama. On March 4,1861, Abraham Lincoln took his oath of office as president of the Union in Washington, DC. The fate of Fort Sumter lay in the hands of these two leaders.

As weeks passed, pressure grew for Lincoln to take some action on Fort Sumter and to reunite the states. Lincoln thought of the Southern secession as "artificial." When Jefferson Davis sent a group of commissioners to Washington to negotiate for the transfer of Fort Sumter to South Carolina, they were promptly rebuffed.

Lincoln had a dilemma. Fort Sumter was running out of supplies, but an attack on the fort would appear as Northern aggression. States that still remained part of the Union (such as Virginia and North Carolina) might be driven into the secessionist camp. People at home and abroad might become sympathetic to the South. Yet Lincoln could not allow his troops to starve or surrender and risk showing considerable weakness.

At last he developed a plan. On April 6, Lincoln told the governor of South Carolina that he was going to send provisions to Fort Sumter. He would send no arms, troops, or ammunition — unless, of course, South Carolina attacked.

Now the dilemma sat with Jefferson Davis. Attacking Lincoln's resupply brigade would make the South the aggressive party. But he simply could not allow the fort to be resupplied. J.G. Gilchrist, a Southern newspaper writer, warned, "Unless you sprinkle the blood in the face of the people of Alabama, they will be back in the old Union in less than ten days."

Davis decided he had no choice but to order Anderson to surrender Sumter. Anderson refused.

The Civil War began at 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, when Confederate artillery, under the command of General Pierre Gustave T. Beauregard, opened fire on Fort Sumter. Confederate batteries showered the fort with over 3,000 shells in a three-and-a-half day period. Anderson surrendered. Ironically, Beauregard had developed his military skills under Anderson's instruction at West Point. This was the first of countless relationships and families devastated in the Civil War. The fight was on.

QUIZ TIME: Fort Sumter

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The most destructive war in America's history was fought among its own people.

The Civil War was a tragedy of unimaginable proportions. For four long and bloody years, Americans were killed at the hands of other Americans. One of every 25 American men perished in the war. Over 640,000 soldiers were killed. Many civilians also died — in numbers often unrecorded.

At the battle of Antietam, more Americans were killed than on any other single day in all of American history. On that day, 22,719 soldiers fell to their deaths — four times the number of Americans lost during the D-Day assault on Normandy in WWII. In fact, more American soldiers died in the Civil War than in all other American wars combined.

The war was fought in American fields, on American roads, and in American cities with a ferocity that could be evoked only in terrible nightmares. Nearly every family in the nation was touched by this war. Scarcely a family in the South did not lose a son, brother, or father.

Four long years of battle changed everything. No other event since the Revolutionary War altered the political, social, economic, and cultural fabric of the United States. In the end, a predominantly industrial society triumphed over an agricultural one. The Old South was forever changed. The blemish of slavery was finally removed from American life, though its legacy would long linger.

In 1861, everyone predicted a short war. Most believed that one battle of enormous proportion would settle a dispute at least 90 years in the making. But history dictated a far more destructive course.

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The force of events moved very quickly upon the election of Lincoln. South Carolina acted first, calling for a convention to secede from the Union. State by state, conventions were held, and the Confederacy was formed.

Within three months of Lincoln's election, seven states had seceded from the Union. Just as Springfield, Illinois celebrated the election of its favorite son to the Presidency on November 7, so did Charleston, South Carolina, which did not cast a single vote for him. It knew that the election meant the formation of a new nation. The Charleston Mercury said, "The tea has been thrown overboard, the revolution of 1860 has been initiated."

South Carolina Ordinance of Secession

Done at Charleston the twentieth day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty.

Within a few days, the two United States Senators from South Carolina submitted their resignations. On December 20, 1860, by a vote of 169-0, the South Carolina legislature enacted an "ordinance" that "the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of 'The United States of America,' is hereby dissolved." As Gist had hoped, South Carolina's action resulted in conventions in other southern states. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas all left the Union by February 1. On February 4, delegates from all these states except Texas met in Montgomery, Alabama, to create and staff a government called the Confederate States of America. They elected President Jefferson Davis. The gauntlet was thrown. How would the North respond?

A few last ditch efforts were made to end the crisis through Constitutional amendment. Senator John Jordan Crittenden proposed to amend the Constitution to extend the old 36°30' line to the Pacific. All territory North of the line would be forever free, and all territory south of the line would receive federal protection for slavery. Republicans refused to support this measure.

On March 2, 1861, two days before Lincoln's inauguration, the 36th Congress passed the Corwin Amendment and submitted it to the states for ratification as an amendment to the Constitution. Senator William H. Seward of New York introduced the amendment in the Senate and Representative Thomas Corwin of Ohio introduced it in the House of Representatives. The text of the proposed amendment is as follows:

"No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State."

Note that, much like the rest of the language in the Constitution prior to the Civil War, the proposed amendment never uses the word "slavery," instead employing the euphemisms "domestic institutions" and "persons held to labor or service." The proposed amendment was designed to reassure the seceding slave states that the federal government would not interfere with their "peculiar institution." If it had passed, it would have rendered unconstitutional any subsequent amendments restricting slavery, such as the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery throughout the nation. The Corwin Amendment passed the state legislatures in Ohio, Kentucky, Rhode Island and Maryland. Even Lincoln's own state of Illinois passed it, though the lawmakers who voted for it in Illinois were not actually the elected legislators but were delegates to a state constitutional convention.

Lincoln supported the Amendment, specifically mentioning it in his first inaugural address:

"I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution — which amendment, however, I have not seen — has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service ... holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable. "

The amendment failed to get the required approval of 3/4 of all state legislatures for a Constitutional Amendment, largely because many of the southern slave states had already seceded and did not vote on it.

What was the President doing during all this furor? Abraham Lincoln would not be inaugurated until March 4. James Buchanan presided over the exodus from the Union. Although he thought secession to be illegal, he found using the army in this case to be unconstitutional. Both regions awaited the arrival of President Lincoln and wondered anxiously what he would do.

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Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War, Virginia Center for Digital History, University of Virginia

The Democrats met in Charleston, South Carolina, in April 1860 to select their candidate for President in the upcoming election. It was turmoil. Northern democrats felt that Stephen Douglas had the best chance to defeat the "Black Republicans." Although an ardent supporter of slavery, southern Democrats considered Douglas a traitor because of his support of popular sovereignty, permitting territories to choose not to have slavery. Southern democrats stormed out of the convention, without choosing a candidate. Six weeks later, the northern Democrats chose Douglas, while at a separate convention the Southern Democrats nominated then Vice-President John C. Breckenridge.

The Republicans met in Chicago that May and recognized that the Democrat's turmoil actually gave them a chance to take the election. They needed to select a candidate who could carry the North and win a majority of the Electoral College. To do that, the Republicans needed someone who could carry New Jersey, Illinois, Indiana and Pennsylvania — four important states that remained uncertain. There were plenty of potential candidates, but in the end Abraham Lincoln had emerged as the best choice. Lincoln had become the symbol of the frontier, hard work, the self-made man and the American dream. His debates with Douglas had made him a national figure and the publication of those debates in early 1860 made him even better known. After the third ballot, he had the nomination for President.

A number of aging politicians and distinguished citizens, calling themselves the Constitutional Union Party, nominated John Bell of Tennessee, a wealthy slaveholder as their candidate for President. These people were for moderation. They decided that the best way out of the present difficulties that faced the nation was to take no stand at all on the issues that divided the north and the south.

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On October 16, 1859, John Brown led a small army of 18 men into the small town of Harper's Ferry, Virginia. His plan was to instigate a major slave rebellion in the South. He would seize the arms and ammunition in the federal arsenal, arm slaves in the area and move south along the Appalachian Mountains, attracting slaves to his cause. He had no rations. He had no escape route. His plan was doomed from the very beginning. But it did succeed to deepen the divide between the North and South.

John Brown and his cohorts marched into an unsuspecting Harper's Ferry and seized the federal complex with little resistance. It consisted of an armory, arsenal, and engine house. He then sent a patrol out into the country to contact slaves, collected several hostages, including the great grandnephew of George Washington, and sat down to wait. The slaves did not rise to his support, but local citizens and militia surrounded him, exchanging gunfire, killing two townspeople and eight of Brown's company. Troops under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee arrived from Washington to arrest Brown. They stormed the engine house, where Brown had withdrawn, captured him and members of his group, and turned them over to Virginia authorities to be tried for treason. He was quickly tried and sentenced to hang on December 2.

Brown's strange effort to start a rebellion was over less than 36 hours after it started; however, the consequences of his raid would last far longer. In the North, his raid was greeted by many with widespread admiration. While they recognized the raid itself was the act of a madman, some northerners admired his zeal and courage. Church bells pealed on the day of his execution and songs and paintings were created in his honor. Brown was turned into an instant martyr. Ralph Waldo Emerson predicted that Brown would make "the gallows as glorious as the cross." The majority of northern newspapers did, however, denounce the raid. The Republican Party adopted a specific plank condemning John Brown and his ill-fated plan. But that was not what the south saw.

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In 1858, as the country moved ever closer to disunion, two politicians from Illinois attracted the attention of a nation. From August 21 until October 15, Stephen Douglas battled Abraham Lincoln in face to face debates around the state. The prize they sought was a seat in the Senate. Lincoln challenged Douglas to a war of ideas. Douglas took the challenge. The debates were to be held at 7 locations throughout Illinois. The fight was on and the nation was watching.

The spectators came from all over Illinois and nearby states by train, by canal-boat, by wagon, by buggy, and on horseback. They briefly swelled the populations of the towns that hosted the debates. The audiences participated by shouting questions, cheering the participants as if they were prizefighters, applauding and laughing. The debates attracted tens of thousands of voters and newspaper reporters from across the nation.

During the debates, Douglas still advocated "popular sovereignty," which maintained the right of the citizens of a territory to permit or prohibit slavery. It was, he said, a sacred right of self-government. Lincoln pointed out that Douglas's position directly challenged the Dred Scott decision, which decreed that the citizens of a territory had no such power.

Excerpt from Abraham Lincoln's speech, "A House Divided"

Excerpt from Stephen Douglas's Freeport Doctrine speech at Freeport, Illinois.

In what became known as the Freeport Doctrine, Douglas replied that whatever the Supreme Court decided was not as important as the actions of the citizens. If a territory refused to have slavery, no laws, no Supreme Court ruling, would force them to permit it. This sentiment would be taken as betrayal to many southern Democrats and would come back to haunt Douglas in his bid to become President in the election of 1860.

Time and time again, Lincoln made that point that "a house divided could not stand." Douglas refuted this by noting that the founders, "left each state perfectly free to do as it pleased on the subject." Lincoln felt that blacks were entitled to the rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, which include "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Douglas argued that the founders intended no such inclusion for blacks.

Neither Abraham Lincoln nor Stephen Douglas won a popular election that fall. Under rules governing Senate elections, voters cast their ballots for local legislators, who then choose a Senator. The Democrats won a majority of district contests and returned Douglas to Washington. But the nation saw a rising star in the defeated Lincoln. The entire drama that unfolded in Illinois would be played on the national stage only two years later with the highest of all possible stakes.

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Missouri Historical Society

From the 1780s, the question of whether slavery would be permitted in new territories had threatened the Union. Over the decades, many compromises had been made to avoid disunion. But what did the Constitution say on this subject? This question was raised in 1857 before the Supreme Court in case of Dred Scott vs. Sandford. Dred Scott was a slave of an army surgeon, John Emerson. Scott had been taken from Missouri to posts in Illinois and what is now Minnesota for several years in the 1830s, before returning to Missouri. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had declared the area including Minnesota free. In 1846, Scott sued for his freedom on the grounds that he had lived in a free state and a free territory for a prolonged period of time. Finally, after eleven years, his case reached the Supreme Court. At stake were answers to critical questions, including slavery in the territories and citizenship of African-Americans. The verdict was a bombshell.

• The Court ruled that Scott's "sojourn" of two years to Illinois and the Northwest Territory did not make him free once he returned to Missouri.
• The Court further ruled that as a black man Scott was excluded from United States citizenship and could not, therefore, bring suit. According to the opinion of the Court, African-Americans had not been part of the "sovereign people" who made the Constitution.
• The Court also ruled that Congress never had the right to prohibit slavery in any territory. Any ban on slavery was a violation of the Fifth Amendment, which prohibited denying property rights without due process of law.
• The Missouri Compromise was therefore unconstitutional.

The Chief Justice of the United States was Roger B. Taney, a former slave owner, as were four other southern justices on the Court. The two dissenting justices of the nine-member Court were the only Republicans. The north refused to accept a decision by a Court they felt was dominated by "Southern fire-eaters." Many Northerners, including Abraham Lincoln, felt that the next step would be for the Supreme Court to decide that no state could exclude slavery under the Constitution, regardless of their wishes or their laws.

Two of the three branches of government, the Congress and the President, had failed to resolve the issue. Now the Supreme Court rendered a decision that was only accepted in the southern half of the country. Was the American experiment collapsing? The only remaining national political institution with both northern and southern strength was the Democratic Party, and it was now splitting at the seams. The fate of the Union looked hopeless.

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Between 1856 and 1860, America would see a breakdown in many of its political processes that had developed over the last eight decades. The great compromisers of the early 19th century — Daniel Webster, Henry Clay and John Calhoun — were gone, and their leadership in avoiding disunion were gone as well. Forces on the extremes were becoming more and more powerful, reducing the influence of moderates and crippling the spirit of reconciliation. Front and center was the issue of slavery. Could the country be saved, or was it on an irrevocable path toward disunion?

The Congress and the Presidents of the past decade had failed to resolve the burning issue of slavery in the territories. Could the Supreme Court, the highest law in the land, put the issue to rest? Politicians and the American public hoped it could determine some long term framework for settlement of the slavery issue. An opportunity was presented when the Dred Scott case reached the High Court. As a slave having lived in a free territory, was he now free when he returned to a slave state? No. And more — neither a state nor Congress had the right to outlaw slavery.

The Dred Scott decision was unacceptable in the north. This prompted a young lawyer from Illinois to return to politics, seeking Stephen Douglas's seat in Congress — he was Abraham Lincoln. A series of debates between the two foreshadowed the issues of the election 1860.

John Brown returned. He organized a daring attack on slavery by attempting to incite a mass uprising of slaves, at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. While he failed in his effort to cause a slave rebellion, he succeeded in causing an insurrection of conscience in the north as well as grave misgivings in the south about its future in the Union.

The results of these events and the forces that caused them became hot spots in the cauldron of electoral politics. The north could never accept a President who planned to protect or extend slavery. The south would never accept a President who refused to do so. The nomination of candidates and the election of the President in 1860 were among the most divisive events in the history of this nation. Abraham Lincoln was President, and within weeks, 7 states left the Union to form the Confederate States of America.

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Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was an avowed Abolitionist and leader of the Republican Party. After the sack of Lawrence, on May 21, 1856, he gave a bitter speech in the Senate called "The Crime Against Kansas." He blasted the "murderous robbers from Missouri," calling them "hirelings, picked from the drunken spew and vomit of an uneasy civilization." Part of this oratory was a bitter, personal tirade against South Carolina's Senator Andrew Butler. Sumner declared Butler an imbecile and said, "Senator Butler has chosen a mistress. I mean the harlot, slavery." During the speech, Stephen Douglas leaned over to a colleague and said, "that damn fool will get himself killed by some other damn fool." The speech went on for two days.

Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina thought Sumner went too far. Southerners in the nineteenth century were raised to live by an unwritten code of honor. Defending the reputation of one's family was at the top of the list. A distant cousin of Senator Butler, Brooks decided to teach Charles Sumner a lesson he would not soon forget. Two days after the end of Sumner's speech, Brooks entered the Senate chamber where Sumner was working at his desk. He flatly told Sumner, "You've libeled my state and slandered my white-haired old relative, Senator Butler, and I've come to punish you for it." Brooks proceeded to strike Sumner over the head repeatedly with a gold-tipped cane. The cane shattered as Brooks rained blow after blow on the hapless Sumner, but Brooks could not be stopped. Only after being physically restrained by others did Brooks end the pummeling.

Northerners were incensed. The House voted to expel Brooks, but it could not amass the votes to do so. Brooks was levied a $300 fine for the assault. He resigned and returned home to South Carolina, seeking the approval of his actions there. South Carolina held events in his honor and reelected him to his House seat. Replacement canes were sent to Brooks from all over the south. This response outraged northern moderates even more than the caning itself.

As for poor Charles Sumner, the physical and psychological injuries from the caning kept him away from the Senate for most of the next several years. The voters of Massachusetts also reelected him and let his seat sit vacant during his absence as a reminder of southern brutality. The violence from Kansas had spilled over into the national legislature.

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John Brown was not a timid man. A devout reader of the Bible, he found human bondage immoral and unthinkable. The father of 20 children, he and his wife Mary settled in Kansas to wage a war on the forces of slavery. A few days after the sack of Lawrence, Brown sought revenge. He was furious that the people of Lawrence had chosen not to fight. He told his followers that they must "fight fire with fire," and they must "strike terror in the hearts of the pro-slavery people." In his eyes, the only just fate for those responsible for the border ruffian laws was death. A great believer in "an eye for an eye," John Brown sought to avenge the sack of Lawrence.

Vengeance would come on the night of May 24, three days after the Lawrence affair. Setting out after dark with 7 others and calling himself the Army of the North, Brown entered the pro-slavery town of Pottawatomie Creek. Armed with rifles, knives, and broadswords, Brown and his band stormed the houses of his enemies. One by one, Brown's group dragged out helpless victims and hacked at their heads with the broadswords. In one encounter, they even killed two sons of an individual they sought. Before the night was through, five victims lay brutally slain by the hands of John Brown.

It was the South's turn to be outraged. Destroying property was one thing, but no one had been killed at Lawrence. Brown had raised the stakes. He and his followers were doggedly hunted well into the summer. Federal troops arrested two of Brown's sons who had not been with him. Border ruffians burned the Brown homesteads to the ground. But John Brown lived to fight another day. Now a fugitive, he traveled north where he was received by Abolitionists like a cult hero. This would not be the last America would hear of John Brown. He would again make national headlines at Harper's Ferry in 1859.

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Lawrence was the center of Kansas's anti-slavery movement. It was named for Amos Lawrence, a New England financier who provided aid to anti-slavery farmers and settlers. This group went beyond simple monetary aid. New England Abolitionists shipped boxes of Sharps rifles, named "Beecher's Bibles," to anti-slavery forces. The name for the rifles came from a comment by Henry Ward Beecher, the anti-slavery preacher who had remarked that a rifle might be a more powerful moral agent on the Kansas plains than a Bible. The lines were now drawn. Each side had passion, and each side had guns.

The administration of President Franklin Pierce refused to step in to resolve the election dispute resulting from the "border ruffians." In the spring of 1856, Judge Samuel Lecompte demanded that members of the anti-slavery government in Kansas, called the Free-Soil government, be indicted for treason. Many leaders in this government lived in Lawrence. On May 21, 1856, the pro-slavery forces sprung into action. A posse of over 800 men from Kansas and Missouri rode to Lawrence to arrest members of the free state government. The citizens of Lawrence decided against resistance. However, the mob was not satisfied. They proceeded to destroy two newspaper offices as they threw the printing presses from the Free-Soil newspaper into the nearby river. They burned and looted homes and shops. As a final message to Abolitionists, they aimed their cannons at the Free State Hotel and smashed it into oblivion.

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The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act would lead to a civil war between pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers in Kansas.

Slavery was quite likely to be outlawed in Nebraska, where cotton doesn't grow well. The situation in Kansas was entirely different, where the land was similar to Missouri's, which was a slave state. Kansas was to be governed by the principle of popular sovereignty. Whether Kansas was to be slave or free would be decided at the polls. Both free and slave forces were determined to hold sway.

Missouri counties that bordered Kansas were strongly pro-slavery and wanted their neighbor to be a slave state. In the fall of 1854, Senator David Atchison of Missouri led over 1,700 men from Missouri into Kansas to vote for their pro-slavery representative. These were the infamous "border ruffians," who threatened to shoot, burn and hang those opposed to slavery.

Although their votes were later ruled fraudulent, their candidate was elected to Congress. When it came time to elect a territorial legislature the following March, almost 5,000 men came into the state from Missouri to cast illegal ballots. Pro-slavery forces had the numbers, not the ethics, on their side. Anti-slavery settlers, though the majority in Kansas, were outvoted. The result of the election through fraud was a legislature with 36 pro-slavery delegates and 3 anti-slavery delegates.

As one of their first acts, this legislature passed a harsh slave code that provided fines and imprisonment simply for expressing opinions against slavery. The death penalty would be administered to any individual found guilty of assisting slaves to revolt or escape. It also legalized the "border ruffian" vote by not requiring voters to be residents in Kansas prior to voting and made the law retroactive to the preceding elections.

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The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 may have been the single most significant event leading to the Civil War. By the early 1850s settlers and entrepreneurs wanted to move into the area now known as Nebraska. However, until the area was organized as a territory, settlers would not move there because they could not legally hold a claim on the land. The southern states' representatives in Congress were in no hurry to permit a Nebraska territory because the land lay north of the 36°30' parallel — where slavery had been outlawed by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Just when things between the north and south were in an uneasy balance, Kansas and Nebraska opened fresh wounds.

The person behind the Kansas-Nebraska Act was Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois.

He said he wanted to see Nebraska made into a territory and, to win southern support, proposed a southern state inclined to support slavery. It was Kansas. Underlying it all was his desire to build a transcontinental railroad to go through Chicago. The Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed each territory to decide the issue of slavery on the basis of popular sovereignty. Kansas with slavery would violate the Missouri Compromise, which had kept the Union from falling apart for the last thirty-four years. The long-standing compromise would have to be repealed. Opposition was intense, but ultimately the bill passed in May of 1854. Territory north of the sacred 36°30' line was now open to popular sovereignty. The North was outraged.

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For decades, both northern states and southern states had threatened secession and dissolution of the Union over the question of where slavery was to be permitted. At issue was power. Both sides sought to limit the governing power of the other by maintaining a balance of membership in Congress. This meant ensuring that admission of a new state where slavery was outlawed was matched by a state permitting slavery. For example, at the same time that Missouri entered the Union as a slave state, Maine entered the Union as a free state.

New states were organized into self-governing territories before they became states. Hence, they developed a position on the slavery issue well before their admission to the Union. Southerners held that slavery must be permitted in all territories. Northerners held that slavery must not be extended into new territories.

If slavery were not permitted in the territories, slavery would never gain a foothold within them and southern power in Congress would gradually erode. If either side were successful in gaining a distinct advantage, many felt disunion and civil war would follow.

Kansas would be the battleground on which the north and south would first fight. The Kansas-Nebraska Act led both to statehood and to corruption, hatred, anger, and violence. Men from neighboring Missouri stuffed ballot boxes in Kansas to ensure that a legislature friendly to slavery would be elected. Anti-slavery, or free soil, settlers formed a legislature of their own in Topeka. Within two years, there would be armed conflict between proponents of slavery and those against it.

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The plan was set forth. The giants — Calhoun, Webster, and Clay — had spoken. Still the Congress debated the contentious issues well into the summer. Each time Clay's Compromise was set forth for a vote, it did not receive a majority. Henry Clay himself had to leave in sickness, before the dispute could be resolved. In his place, Stephen Douglas worked tirelessly to end the fight. On July 9, President Zachary Taylor died of food poisoning. His successor, Millard Fillmore, was much more interested in compromise. The environment for a deal was set. By September, Clay's Compromise became law.

California was admitted to the Union as the 16th free state. In exchange, the south was guaranteed that no federal restrictions on slavery would be placed on Utah or New Mexico. Texas lost its boundary claims in New Mexico, but the Congress compensated Texas with $10 million. Slavery was maintained in the nation's capital, but the slave trade was prohibited. Finally, and most controversially, a Fugitive Slave Law was passed, requiring northerners to return runaway slaves to their owners under penalty of law.

Compromise of 1850

Who won and who lost in the deal? Although each side received benefits, the north seemed to gain the most. The balance of the Senate was now with the free states, although California often voted with the south on many issues in the 1850s. The major victory for the south was the Fugitive Slave Law. In the end, the north refused to enforce it. Massachusetts even called for its nullification, stealing an argument from John C. Calhoun. Northerners claimed the law was unfair. The flagrant violation of the Fugitive Slave Law set the scene for the tempest that emerged later in the decade. But for now, Americans hoped against hope that the fragile peace would prevail.

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Henry Clay of Kentucky, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, and Daniel Webster of Massachusetts dominated national politics from the end of the War of 1812 until their deaths in the early 1850s. Although none would ever be President, the collective impact they created in Congress was far greater than any President of the era, with the exception of Andrew Jackson. There was one issue that loomed over the nation throughout their time in power — slavery. They were continuously successful in keeping peace in America by forging a series of compromises. The next generation's leaders were not.

The Gold Rush led to the rapid settlement of California which resulted in its imminent admission as the 31st state. Southerners recognized that there were few slaves in California because Mexico had prohibited slavery. Immediate admission would surely mean California would be the 16th free state, giving the non-slave-holding states an edge in the Senate. Already holding the House of Representatives, the free states could then dominate legislation.

Texas was claiming land that was part of New Mexico. As a slave state, any expansion of the boundaries of Texas would be opening new land to slavery. northerners were opposed. The north was also appalled at the ongoing practice of slavery in the nation's capital — a practice the south was not willing to let go. The lines were drawn as the three Senatorial giants took the stage for the last critical time.

Henry Clay had brokered compromises before. When the Congress was divided in 1820 over the issue of slavery in the Louisiana Territory, Clay set forth the Missouri Compromise. When South Carolina nullified the tariff in 1832, Clay saved the day with the Compromise Tariff of 1833. After 30 years in Congress and three unsuccessful attempts at the Presidency, Clay wanted badly to make good with yet another nation-saving deal. He put forth a set of eight proposals that he hoped would pass muster with his colleagues.

John C. Calhoun took to the floor next. Although sick and dying with consumption, he sat sternly in the Senate chamber, as his speech was read. The compromises would betray the south, he claimed. Northerners would have to agree to federal protection of slavery for the south to feel comfortable remaining in the Union. His words foreshadowed the very doom to the Union that would come within the decade.

Daniel Webster spoke three days after Calhoun's speech. With the nation's fate in the balance, he pleaded with northerners to accept southern demands, for the sake of Union. Withdrawing his former support for the Wilmot Proviso, he hoped to persuade enough of his colleagues to move closer to Clay's proposals. Although there was no immediate deal, his words echoed in the minds of the Congressmen as they debated into that hot summer.

By 1852, Clay, Calhoun, and Webster had all passed away. They left a rich legacy behind them. Clay of the West, Calhoun of the South, and Webster of the North loved and served their country greatly. The generation that followed produced no leader that could unite the country without the force of arms.