Cival War :: essays research papers

Abraham capital of Nebraska and the Beginnings of ReconstructionSince the write downning of the nineteenth century, the rapidly suppuration white population and the equally increasingslave population had been rise the conflict between slave-free Northern states and the slave-holding cotton beltSouth. Hopelessly separate over the issue of slavery, thirty-one million American citizens were in 1860 called upon to choose the sixteenth President of the United renders of America. When the anti-slavery Republican Abraham capital of Nebraska waselected on November 6, 1860, no fellow American could have even imagined what great slant would lay upon thehighest office in the years to come.1 Lincolns election was the ultimate trigger for eleven Southern states to withdrawfrom the Union and begin a desperate civil war that lasted for four years. Once it became sportsmanlike the South could not winthe war, the president was confronted with the question of Reconstruction, that is, to resto re federal official authority andestablish loyal free state governments in the engaged areas of the rebellious South. In the early phase of the war,Lincoln had favored a simple and rapid restoration of all areas conquered by Union armies. However, when Lincolnfailed to restore the states old allegiances, he shifted his plan towards a much much radical proposal. By 1864, after thebloody campaigns of Gettysburg and Vicksburg have sacrificed the lives of tens of thousands men, Lincoln resolvedthat he would only allow slave states to reenter the Union if they back up both the abolishment of slavery and theestablishment of black suffrage.In the months avocation Lincolns election, the country fell to pieces, beginning with South Carolina inDecember, 1860. Within four months, the states of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas,North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee had all seceded and formed the new Confederated State of America.2Was the secession of these states legal? Even more, was their secession constitutional? While thesecessionists vista themselves to be fully within their constitutional rights, Lincoln persistently believed that the