-
The Emancipation Proclamation
On January 1, 1863, the president duly issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It applied only to those areas of the United States that were still in arms against the government and much of the document was taken up with a list of counties in rebel states that, because they were no longer under rebel control, were exempted from the proclamation. Lincoln took a political and strategic risk in coupling together the fate ofthe Union with the fate of slavery. -
New York City Draft Riots
Northerners on the home front may have been far from the sound of gunfire, but they still felt the impact of conflict. Few northerners opposed the war at the outset but, by 1862, two issues emancipation and conscription.,aroused fierce opposition. In some of the worst rioting in American history, thousands of workers, rampaged through the city in a howl of rage against attempts to implement the draft. They launched indiscriminate attacks on the black population of the city, lynching them. -
Gettysburg Address
Lincoln’s speech was a two-minute address to dedicate the military cemetery at Gettysburg. Lincoln said that the Constitution merely gave form to the nation, and that the nation mattered not as an end in itself, but as an embodiment of the ideals of equality and liberty. -
The 1864 Election
In 1864, Lincoln ran for re-election against former general George B McClellan, whose Democratic supporters were united in opposition to emancipation but divided over whether to continue the war. For Republicans, the election was a test of loyalty to the national cause. “For four summers the loyal North has been firing bullets at the rebellion,” ran a typical editorial. “The time has now come to fire ballots.” -
Lincoln’s Assassination
John Wilkes Booth fired a bullet into Lincoln’s head at close range, then leapt from the box onto the stage. Before the audience grasped what they had witnessed, Booth fled, only to die when Federal troops caught up with him. -
Black Codes
were laws governing the conduct of African Americans. The best known of them were passed in 1865 and 1866 by Southern states, after the American Civil War, in order to restrict African Americans' freedom, and to compel them to work for low wages. -
Reconstruction Acts
enacted in 1867–68 that outlined the conditions under which the Southern states would be readmitted to the Union following the American Civil War (1861–65). The bills were largely written by the Radical Republicans in the U.S. Congress.