- Republican majorities in both houses after Southern secession
- Within Republican ranks, however, there were differences between the radicals (who wanted immediate abolition of slavery) & the moderates (Free-Soilers who were concerned about economic opportunities for whites)
- Democrats supported war, disapproved Lincoln conduct of it
- Southern arguments for nullification and secession ceased to be issues.
- After the Civil War, the supremacy of the federal government over the states was treated as an established fact.
- The abolition of slavery-in addition to its importance to freed African Americans-gave new meaning & legitimacy to the concept of democracy.
- In his Gettysburg Address of Nov.19, 1863, Lincoln rallied Americans to the idea their nation was dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal as Lincoln was probably alluding to the Emancipation Proclamation when he spoke of the war bringing a new birth of freedom.
- Comprises the series of events that began on December 20, 1860, and extended through June 8 of the next year when eleven states in the Lower and Upper South severed their ties with the Union.
- The border states of Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina joined the new government, which then moved its capital to Richmond, Virginia.
- Secession had been a matter of concern to some members of the Constitutional Convention that met at Philadelphia in 1787. Theoretically, secession was bound up closely with Whig thought, which claimed the right of revolution against a despotic government.
- Confiscation Acts, (1861–64), in U.S. history, series of laws passed by the federal government during the American Civil War that were designed to liberate slaves in the seceded states.
- first Confiscation Act, passed on Aug. 6, 1861,
- The second Confiscation Act, passed July 17, 1862, was virtually an emancipation proclamation. It said that slaves of civilian and military “shall be forever free,”
- On March 12, 1863, and July 2, 1864, the federal government passed additional measures (“Captured and Abandoned Property Acts”) that defined property subject to seizure as that was owned by absent individuals who supported the South. The Confederate Congress also passed property confiscation acts to apply to Union adherents.
- With the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) and passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, however, Southern slaveholders lost an estimated $2,000,000,000 worth of human property.