Abraham Lincoln Colloquia Study

Lincoln Era DATES & NAMES

Feb 12, 1809

Manifest Destiny

Northwest Ordinance

War of 1812

Missouri Compromise 1820

Monroe Doctrine of 1823

1833 South Carolina Threat

John C. Calhoun

President Andrew Jackson

Force Act

Black Hawk War 

Popular sovereignty

Henry Clay, Senator

Compromise of 1850

Mexican American War Territories

Kansas Nebraska Act of 1954

Steven A Douglas

Jefferson Davis

“Bloody Kansas,”

Dred Scott decision in 1857

Republican political party

Democrat political party

Whig Political Party

Election of 1860

March of 1861

Confederate States of America – Name Them

Emancipation Proclamation

Gettysburg Address

September 22, 1862.-- Jan 1, 1863

November 19, 1863

Election of 1864

April 8, 1864

Thirteenth Amendment

Slavery Resolution Amendments

APRIL  15, 1861

APRIL  15, 1865

JW Booth

General R. E. Lee

Ulysses S. Grant

General Beauregard

George McClelland

General George Meade

When Abraham Lincoln was born Feb 12, 1809 the federal government had been organized just twenty years. The countries original thirteen colonies, and territory yet to be settled, were still very much subject to the influence of its parent country.  The United States won over Britain in the War of 1812 and then Pres. James Monroe issued this warning to Britain with the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 stating America’s right to self- determination on its own power.  Lincoln's early years coincided with rapid frontier movements and pioneer expansion.

in 1833, a clash between state and federal power began when South Carolina threatened to secede after a series of high tariffs were passed by the federal government. John C. Calhoun, South Carolina  senator attempted to nullify federal tariff policy  and President Andrew Jackson signed the Force Act, with federal military intervention toward the insurgency. South Carolina eventually backed down, but not before revealing the schism between these two rival opinions.  Slavery in the western expansion had been curtailed with the Northwest Ordinance, still the question of slavery policy was controversial.

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 under James Monroe, had cut a line between free and slave territory but further expansion caused debate again. As the Western Rep., Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky offered two compromises between the north and south. Clay's vague Compromise of 1850 allowed California to enter the Union as a free state only if it made a fugitive slave law.

Then, anarchy after Stephen Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act passed in 1854, legislation that allowed popular sovereignty. With the question of slavery in the territories thrown open to local sentiment, abolitionists and slavers rushed to populate various districts in the interest of advancing their cause and warfare ensued in “Bloody Kansas,” sparking a fierce national debate over slavery and sovereignty. Then Supreme Court released its Dred Scott decision in 1857, defining slaves as property,  it opened the territories permanently to slavery and declared the abolition of slavery in free states to be unconstitutional.

Then Abraham Lincoln, a former Illinois state legislator and congressman, was elected as president in 1860 on the Republican-a fledgling party of abolitionists taking advantage of the fractured Democratic party and by the time he was inaugurated in March of 1861, seven states had seceded and formally established the Confederate States of America with Jefferson Davis as President.  One month later April 15,  1861 the Civil war began as the Confederate forces under Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter, SC, held by Union forces. 

September 22, 1862. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued stating that as of Jan 1, 1863 all slaves in the eleven confederate states in rebellion would be freed.  Though many slaves had been declared free by Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation their post-war status was uncertain. On April 8, 1864, the Senate passed the thirteenth amendment to abolish slavery. After one unsuccessful vote and extensive legislative maneuvering by the Lincoln administration, the House followed suit on January 31, 1865. The measure was swiftly ratified by nearly all northern states,  along with a sufficient number of border and "reconstructed" Southern states, to cause it to be adopted before the end of the year.

 In 1863 the tide turned against the confederacy and Lincoln won reelection in 1864 and in April 65 was assassinated by JW Booth, five days after the war ended with the surrender of General R. E. Lee at Appomattox courthouse.  In discussing his role as commander-in-chief during the closing months of the Civil War, Lincoln was quite able to "plainly confess that events have controlled me more than I have controlled them," a humble opinion from a big man, who stood at six feet, four inches.

Lincoln recognized the power of the written word, and wary of its tendency to distort, he wrote a 1856 letter to his law partner, William H. Herndon, "biographies as generally written are not only misleading, but false...in most instances they commemorate a lie, and cheat posterity out of the truth."