Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power (65 page)

SELECT GLOSSARY OF TERMS

abolitionists:
The militant reformers who, from the mid-1820s, sought an immediate start to the nationwide removal of slavery. Commonly driven by a perfectionist Protestant religious impulse and a belief that slavery was a personal sin, these absolutists split during the later 1830s: some followed William Lloyd Garrison into “Christian anarchism” and the rejection of political activity; others aimed to use the political system—by organizing a third force, the Liberty party—to bring pressure to bear on the major parties. Abolitionists represented only a small portion of the larger antislavery constituency in the United States. The majority, hostile to the radicals, looked to prevent slavery’s spread into the federal territories and to quarantine it within the slave states, where it would gradually wither away; many advocated the transfer of the free black population to colonies abroad.

American party:
see
Know-Nothing party

antimission Baptists:
Doctrinally strict (“hard-shell”) immersionists, found mostly in the rural Midwest and South, who “out-Calvined” the sixteenth-century theologian John Calvin. Building on Calvin’s understanding of a sovereign God’s foreordination of events, they fashioned a rigid predestinarian theology, and condemned evangelism and all other missionary activity, including organized benevolence, which they particularly associated with New England religious reformers.

Arminianism:
The anti-Calvinist theological doctrine emphasizing human ability and Christ’s general atonement for all (taking its name from the sixteenth-century Dutch reformer Jacobus Arminius). This system of beliefs provided the ideological engine for the most powerful of all the mid-nineteenth-century American denominations, the Methodists.

Baptists:
see
evangelical Protestants

border states:
The northernmost tier of slave states (Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware), linked economically and culturally to both North and South. Of these, only Virginia seceded when war broke out, and it would suffer its own fracture, with the secession of West Virginia to the Union.

Campbellites:
see
Disciples of Christ

Compromise of 1850:
The political settlement—proposed by Henry Clay and eventually achieved through the shrewd congressional management of Stephen Douglas—which resolved the growing crisis occasioned by disputes over states’ rights and the future of slavery in the lands wrested from Mexico. Northern antislavery and free-soil advocates secured California’s entry to the Union as a free state, and the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia. Southerners won a strict new Fugitive Slave Law, and federal settlement of the Texas debt. At the heart of the settlement—more an armistice than a true compromise—stood the organization of New Mexico and Utah territories on the principle of “popular sovereignty”: the issue of slavery would be left for the settlers themselves to decide (subject to the verdict of the courts). Douglas’s application of this principle to the Nebraska Territory in 1854 brought to an end the relative political calm secured by his efforts four years earlier.

Confiscation Acts:
The First Confiscation Act, of August 6, 1861, allowed the federal army to free any slaves being used by the Confederacy for military purposes. The Second Confiscation Act, of July 17, 1862, meeting demands for a harsher (“hard war”) policy, empowered the military authorities to confiscate the property, including slaves, owned by those deemed active rebels.

Copperheads:
The antiwar element of the wartime Democratic party, so named by their opponents after the poisonous snake that strikes without warning. Their heartland was the Midwest, where they were particularly strong in the southern counties of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.

Democratic party:
The political coalition fostered in the 1820s by Martin Van Buren on the bisectional foundations of Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican party. From 1828—when Andrew Jackson won the presidency—until 1860, the party dominated national politics, offering a mix of states’ rights philosophy, laissez-faire doctrine, and territorial expansion. It suffered devastating losses in the North following the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Sectionally unbalanced, it split in 1860 over the issue of the federal government’s power over, and responsibilities toward, slavery. During wartime a minority offered robust support to the Lincoln administration, while a “legitimist” majority contended electorally against the Union-Republican party, and an antiwar element labored under the charge of treason for pursuing peace on what appeared to be southern terms.

Disciples of Christ:
Also known as the Campbellites (after Alexander Campbell and his father, Thomas), the movement was a fusion in 1832 of mostly midwestern and southern church separatists and immersionists—so-called Christians and Disciples—who insisted on the primacy of Scripture and the obligation of individuals to interpret the Bible for themselves. The movement numbered 170,000 members by mid-century.

evangelical Protestants:
Evangelicals stressed the individual’s personal need for God’s grace in conversion (“new birth”) and recognized the Bible as the sole authority for the rule of life. They formed the largest subculture in the United States during the Civil War era, the main denominational families being Methodists (who numbered 1,738,000 members nationwide by 1860), missionary Baptists (1,025,000 members), and Presbyterians (426,000 members). Membership numbers understate the churches’ cultural presence, since for each member there were commonly two or three “adherents”: namely those who attended but had made no formal profession of faith.

free-soil doctrine:
The creed deriving from the view that the Founding Fathers had never intended slavery to spread beyond the limits of 1787, and that the U.S. Constitution gave the federal government the power and responsibility to keep the territories free from contamination by slave labor. For some the doctrine was a means of preserving the territories exclusively for white labor; for others it was an essential means of bringing about an antislavery republic.

Free-Soil party:
A coalition of antislavery forces—abolitionists, “conscience” Whigs, and antiadministration Democrats—who, following the defeat of the Wilmot Proviso (see below), sought to keep slave labor out of the territories acquired in the war with Mexico (1846–48). The party ran a presidential ticket in the elections of 1848 and 1852 (“free soil, free speech, free labor and free men”); its members provided much of the energy that went into creating the Republican party during 1854 and 1855.

Fugitive Slave Law:
A part of the political compromise of 1850, this stringent congressional act provided slaveholders in pursuit of runaways with federal guarantees and mechanisms that effectively removed from free blacks the protections of the Bill of Rights (including jury trials). Several northern states passed “personal liberty laws” to frustrate the act’s operation.

habeas corpus:
The common-law writ, a protection of civil liberties, which directs that a detainee must be brought before a judge for a hearing (
habeas corpus:
“you should have the body”). The U.S. Constitution, under Article 1, Section 9, stipulates that the privilege can be set aside only in cases of invasion or rebellion, but it does not say who has the right to suspend the writ.

Kansas-Nebraska Act:
Stephen A. Douglas’s controversial measure, which passed on May 30, 1854, but only after a bitter congressional struggle. The act repealed the Missouri Compromise and invoked “popular sovereignty” as the principle for allowing the settlers of these territories (mostly north of the line of latitude 36�30¢) to decide whether or not to sanction slavery.

Know-Nothing party:
An outgrowth of secret anti-immigrant organizations of the late 1840s and early 1850s. Instructing its members to feign ignorance when asked about it, the party was officially known, from 1854, as the American party. The Know-Nothing impulse lay in the anxieties of native-born citizens over mass arrivals from Catholic Ireland and Germany, and in the failure of the major parties—Whigs and Democrats—to satisfy concerns over crime, liquor, political corruption, the Bible in schools, and other challenges to Protestant values. Many Know-Nothings were staunchly antislavery, and when in June 1855 the national council endorsed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the party’s northern support leached away to the emerging Republican coalition. The American party’s presidential candidate, Millard Fillmore, carried just one state in 1856.

Methodists:
see
evangelical Protestants

millennialism:
The optimistic conviction, shared by most evangelicals, that the nation had a signal role to play in bringing about the Kingdom of God on earth. For Americans of the time, the country’s progress toward a new moral and social order heralded the arrival of the millennial age. The advent of Jesus Christ was not expected until after the millennium: technically most evangelicals of the era were, thus, “postmillennialists.”

Missouri Compromise:
The congressional settlement of 1820 which resolved for a political generation the issue of slavery’s expansion, by admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, and by forbidding slavery in the territories of the Louisiana Purchase north of the line 36�30¢.

nativism:
The antagonism of native-born Americans toward immigrants, commonly on the grounds of religion and labor competition.

new-school Calvinism:
The “modern” or “Arminianized” adaptation of traditional Calvinist beliefs during the early republic, prompted in part by the stunning advance of Methodism. The doctrine took hold particularly amongst New England Congregationalists, and—both in the Northeast and in “Yankee” settlements beyond—Presbyterians. These two denominations numbered some 350,000 members by 1860.

popular sovereignty:
The doctrine, most commonly associated with Senator Stephen Douglas and the Democratic party, and first enunciated during the late 1840s, that the people of a U.S. territory had the right to decide if slavery should be allowed within their borders. Douglas incorporated the principle into the territorial provisions of the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Chief Justice Roger B. Taney in the
Dred Scott
case (1857) seemingly made the doctrine moot.

Preemption Law:
Under the congressional act of 1841, ordinary settlers were allowed to occupy public land before it was officially surveyed and to buy 160 acres at a minimum of $1.25 per acre before the land was offered at public auction.

Presbyterians:
see evangelical Protestants

Republican party:
The political convergence during the mid-1850s of several elements, following the introduction and passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the spread of civil war to “Bleeding Kansas.” Free-soilers, anti-Nebraska Democrats, antislavery Know-Nothings, and “conscience” Whigs coalesced locally at different times and in varying proportions across the North, not necessarily taking the name “Republican.” The party kept radical abolitionism at bay and, adopting the slogan “free soil, free labor, free men,” united in opposition to the extension of slavery and to the Democratic administrations of Pierce and Buchanan. No national organization developed until 1856, when the party ran John C. Frémont for president. During wartime the Republican coalition increasingly took the name “Union party,” as it sought the broadest support for the administration.

territories:
Those areas within the national boundaries not fully enjoying the rights of statehood. Once organized by Congress, a territory is governed by an elected legislature and a governor appointed by the president.

Unitarians:
The American Unitarian Association, formed in 1825, developed out of liberal Congregationalism. Its adherents espoused a doctrine of universal salvation and the fatherhood of God, rejecting Calvinist predestination and the divinity of Christ. Unitarianism’s heartland was New England, and Boston in particular.

Whig party:
Founded in 1834 by the opponents of the “executive tyranny” of “King” Andrew Jackson, the party was a coalition of states’ rights southerners and proponents of Henry Clay’s nationalist economic program (the “American System” of internal improvements, protective tariff, and national bank). The Whigs’ sectional split over slavery—“cotton” versus “conscience”—need not have destroyed the party: it could conceivably have survived in the North as an antislavery force, had not its ambivalence over nativist issues opened the door to the Know-Nothing party. A significant remnant of conservative old-line Whigs in the lower North and border slave states persisted into the late 1850s, and rallied to the standard of the Constitutional Union party in 1860.

Wilmot Proviso:
The amendment introduced by a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania, David Wilmot, to an appropriations bill for the war with Mexico, which sought to ban slavery in any territory secured by the conflict. The proviso enjoyed majority support in the House of Representatives but could not overcome in the Senate the opposition orchestrated by supporters of southern rights.

Yankees:
a term used to describe the people of New England and its diaspora. “Greater New England” included those parts of the upper North into which New Englanders had migrated westward, including the northern counties of New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. During the Civil War, Confederates used the label to refer contemptuously to all northerners.

ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

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Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM).

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Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM).

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Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM).

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GLC 5111.01.0001. Photograph. Bust portrait of Lincoln. February 28, 1857. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 5111.01.0629. Photograph. Bust portrait Abraham Lincoln. Circa 1858. Copied March 6, 1944. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 3589p10. Photograph. Stephen A. Douglas. 1861–c. 1865. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 5111.02.0001. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. February 27, 1860. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 5111.01.0002. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. May 20, 1860. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 5111.01.0004. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. June 3, 1860. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM).

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Library of Congress.

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Library of Congress.

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Library of Congress.

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Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM).

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GLC 08565. Photograph. Lincoln and his secretaries (Hay and Nicolay). November 1863, c. 1884. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 5111.01.1328. Photograph. Portrait photo of Abraham Lincoln. March 1861. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 5111.02.0080. Photograph. Salmon P. Chase. Circa 1861. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 5111.02.0094. Photograph. William H. Seward. Circa 1861. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 5111.02.0103. Photograph. Edwin M. Stanton. Circa 1862. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 5111.02.0107. Photograph. Gideon Welles. Circa 1861. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 5500. Photograph. Winfield Scott. Circa 1860. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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Library of Congress.

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Picture History.

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GLC 5111.02.0378. Photograph. John Frémont as major-general. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 3589p15. Photograph. George B. McClellan. Circa 1861–65. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM).

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GLC 00004. Signed document. Emancipation Proclamation. January 1, 1863. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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Library of Congress.

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GLC 5136#19. Photograph. Mary Todd Lincoln between Willie and Tad Lincoln. [1860.] The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 5136#16. Photograph. Mary Todd Lincoln. [Washington, D.C., 1861.] The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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John Hay Library, Brown University.

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Library of Congress.

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Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM) [Volck].

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Library of Congress [Northern Coat of Arms].

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GLC 245. Photograph. Portrait of Lincoln. November 8, 1863, reprint c. 1910. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM).

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GLC 6044. Broadside. Inaugural address of President Abraham Lincoln. March 4, 1865. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 3094. Photograph. Albumen of Ulysses S. Grant at time of Lincoln’s funeral. Circa May 1865. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 4504.02. Photograph. William T. Sherman. Circa 1865. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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Library of Congress.

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GLC 5111.02.0015. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. January 8, 1864. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 5111.02.0002. Photograph. Lincoln’s first photographic sitting in Washington. Circa February 24, 1861. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 4584. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. Circa March 1861. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 5111.02.0010. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. Circa 1861. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 05111.02.0015. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. January 8, 1864. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 5111.02.0016. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. January 8, 1864. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 5111.02.0018. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. January 8, 1864. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 5111.02.0022. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. February 9, 1864. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 2911.01. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln and his son Tad. February 1864. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 242.12. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. After February 1864. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 241.01. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. Circa 1865. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 5111.02.0027. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. March 6, 1865. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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Library of Congress.

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GLC 5596.10. Signed photograph. Horace Greeley. 1865. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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Collection of The New-York Historical Society [Bennett].

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Picture History [Forney].

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Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM) [Raymond].

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Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM).

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GLC 5111.02.0138. Photograph. Henry W. Beecher. Circa 1860s. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM) [Simpson].

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Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM) [Frederick].

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Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM) [Antietam].

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Louise and Barry Taper Collection [bandage].

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Library of Congress.

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Library of Congress.

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Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM).

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Louise and Barry Taper Collection.

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Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM).

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Library of Congress.

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Library of Congress.

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GLC 08593back. Newspaper.
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.
December 3, 1864. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 5111.02.0028. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. February 5, 1865. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 5136.23. Photograph. John Wilkes Booth. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 6680. Broadside. Edwin M. Stanton. April 15, 1865. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

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GLC 5136.38. Photograph. Lincoln’s funeral parade on Chestnut Street, Philadelphia. 1865. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.