Sunday, November 19, 2006

LAD #16: Emancipation Proclamation

The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive decree by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln during that country's Civil War, which declared the freedom of all slaves in those areas of the rebellious Confederate States of America that had not already returned to Union control. It was issued in two parts: the preliminary document published on September 22, 1862; and the second, published when the decree went into effect 100 days later, January 1, 1863. It was not a law passed by Congress but a Presidential order empowered, Lincoln believed, by his position as "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy". It first affected only those slaves that had already escaped to the Union side, but as the Union armies advanced, tens of thousands of slaves were liberated each day until nearly all were free by summer 1865. Some slavery continued to exist in the border states until the entire institution was finally wiped out by the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment on December 6, 1865. The legality of the Proclamation was never tested in court because legal and scholarly opinion has consistently deemed it to have been a valid use of Presidential authority. Emancipation took place without violence by masters or ex-slaves. The proclamation represented a shift in the war objectives of the North—merely reuniting the nation would no longer become the sole outcome. It represented a major step toward the ultimate abolition of slavery in the United States and the formation of a "more perfect Union."
LAD #15: Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address

Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address on March 4, 1865, at the start of his second term as President. Secessionists in the American Civil War were about to have victory, and slavery had been effectively done with. Licoln did not speak of victory, he spoke of loss, guilt, and sin. Some people see this speech as a defense of his approach to Reconstruction, in which he went to avoid strict treatment of the defeated South by reminding his listeners of how wrong both sides had been in imagining what lay before them when the war began, in all actuality, four years ago. Lincoln balanced that rejection of victory, however, with a recognition of the evil of slavery, which he described in the most concrete terms possible. The statement "to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and orphan" was later adopted by the Veterans Administration as its mission statement.
LAD #14: Dred Scott Decision

When the court met for the first time in early 1857 it favored a moderate decision that ruled in favor of Sanford. It did not consider the larger issues of black citizenship and the Missouri Compromise. President-elect James Buchanan contacted friends on the Supreme Court, and he asked if the Court had reached a decision in the case. He needed some definite information about territories to bring up in his inaugural address on March 4. By inauguration day 1857, Buchanan knew what the outcome of the Supreme Court's decision would be and took the opportunity to throw his support to the Court in his inaugural address. That support was for the idea that every territory should have popular sovereignty and answer this question of slavery themselves. Chief Justice Thaney later in March of the same year addressed not only the slave issue, but the issue of free blacks, as well. One of the privileges reserved for citizens by the Constitution was the "privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified by the Constitution." Taney's opinion stated that blacks, even free blacks, were not citizens of the United States, and that therefore Scott, as a black, did not have the privilege of being able to sue in a federal court. Taney went on to reason that the Missouri Compromise deprived slaveholding citizens of their property in the form of slaves and that therefore the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

LAD #13: Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

Lincoln invoked the principles of human equality that are so famous because of the Declaration of Independence and redefined the Civil War as a struggle not only for the Union, but as "a new birth of freedom" that would bring equality to all of its citizens. Beginning with phrase, "Four score and seven years ago," Lincoln referred to the events of the American Revolution and described the ceremony at Gettysburg as an opportunity not only to dedicate the grounds of a cemetery, but also to honor the living in the struggle to make sure that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Lincoln used the word "nation" five times, but never the word "union," which refers to the North. This restored the nation significantly, not a union of individual states, was extremely important. Lincoln's text referred to the year 1776 and the American Revolutionary War, and included the famous words of the Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created equal". Lincoln did not say anything about the 1789 Constitution, which recognized slavery in the "three-fifths compromise," and he avoided using the word "slavery". He also did not announce anything about the nullification of states' rights in the antebellum period.
LAD #12: Lincoln's First Inaugural Address

Lincoln delivered this address on March 4, 1861 and he touched mainly on the slave-holding interests in the South. He went into detail with and described his views on:

1. Strongest possible federal support for the Fugitive Slave Law
2. He wanted to make it clear that the laws in the nation would be upheld in all of the states, hence his oath: "to preserve, protect, and defend the United States Constitution".
3. Unless he had to execute his need to hold, occupy, and possess the property belonging to the government, there would be no invasion of the South in any way.
4. "To form a more perfect union" was the reason that Constitution was established (much more than the Articles of Confederation). He also stated that the Constitution was just a contract, and people could not be repremanded for not following it unless there was an agreement between all of the parties involved.
5. As to the Corwin amendment that had already been approved by both houses to protect slavery in the states that it had already existed in, he had no objections to it. He simply thought that those rights were already protected through the Constitution.
6. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say what can or cannot be done regarding slavery in the nation, as well as expansion into the West.
7. Mails would still be in continuation.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

LAD #11: John Calhoun's Speech

South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun prepared his last speech during the course of the great debate over the Compromise of 1850, a set of resolutions supported by Henry Clay that emphasized on the controversial slavery question. The aspects of Clay's compromise calling for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and the admission of California as a free state were not negotiable to Calhoun and his followers. In his view, the sovereignty of the states was in trouble. The emphasis was wholly on northern aggressions and against the trend for conciliation and compromise. Two "nations" now existed, torn between the question of whether slavery should be allowed or not in the union, and Calhoun stated that if the question could not be answered, the two "nations" should agree to disagree, and remove themselves from each other.
LAD #10: Polk's War Message

This message was sent to Congress five days after Mexico formally protested the joint resolution for the annexation of Texas. When news came of the clash with Mexican soldiers, President Polk announced that the United States had been attacked. "American blood on the American soil," he said in his message to Congress, asking for a declaration of war against Mexico. Congress voted for war after two days, and Polk's party was in the majority. Some members of Congress believed it was the "manifest destiny" of the United States to occupy all the land from the Atlantic states to the Pacific Ocean. Southerners saw an opportunity to create more slave states. The northerners were against the southerners, stating that it was unfair to admit such a large state to the union, and because it was in the South, it would thus create more slave states than free.
LAD #9: Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments

Female suffrage was a chief topic for discussion, and it began the feminist political movement in the nineteenth century. A group of 200 women and 40 men drafted and approved this document in New York in 1848, which is a series of resolutions calling for women's suffrage and the reform of marital and property laws that kept women in an inferior status to men. This document was intentionally modeled after the Declaration of Independence, hence the name, "Declaration of Sentiments." In the middle of the Declaration of Independence, the writers denounced the King of England, stating all of his wrongdoings and their reason for wanting independence. Modeling from that document, the writers of the Declaration of Sentiments denounced men in general, and stated what they have done wrong in the past, and why women should be granted the freedom of suffrage. Frederick Douglass attended. The convention was organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, two Quakers who were interested in the women suffrage movement when Lucretia Mott was denied entrance into an antislavery meeting because of her gender. This convention was made in order to spur more conventions around the country, and spread the idea of women suffrage. At a time when traditional roles were still very much in place, the Declaration caused much controversy among the people of the nation, and it lost a lot of support because of that reason.