Abraham Lincoln

Shadow War: Federal Military Authority and Loyalty Oaths in Civil War Missouri

In February 1862, the Missouri provisional government’s new state treasurer, George Caleb Bingham, saw a troublesome development in his war-torn state. Garrisoning federal troops, especially in the western portion of Missouri, were subjecting civilians "to a kind of winnowing process by which the 'tares' were to be separated from the wheat — the loyal from the disloyal portion of the inhabitants."

Christopher Phillips
University of Cincinnati

Kansas Territory, the Election of 1860, and the Coming of the Civil War: A National Perspective

In many respects, Kansas—and the question of whether slavery, legal in neighboring Missouri, would be allowed to spread to the territory—was the central issue of the 1860 presidential election, the most significant in U.S. history. Curtailing slavery’s expansion and admitting Kansas as a free state was a key plank in the Republican Party’s platform that year, just as it was during the party’s first presidential election in 1856. The seemingly unanswerable “Kansas Question” and the issue of slavery’s expansion split the venerable Democratic Party into Northern and Southern factions, allowing the Republican Abraham Lincoln to win the election without a single Southern electoral vote.

Jonathan Earle
Louisiana State University

A Long and Bloody Conflict: Military Operations in Missouri and Kansas, Part I

Although the conflict in Virginia has commanded the lion’s share of attention and scholarship, Missouri and Kansas witnessed a tremendous amount of fighting during the American Civil War. Only two states, Virginia and Tennessee, had more actions fought on their soil during the Civil War than Missouri. Missouri was a strategically vital state for President Abraham Lincoln and the federal government’s war effort, and a case can be made that the Civil War started on the Missouri-Kansas border in the 1850s, during “Bleeding Kansas.” Missouri was split in its sentiments, and many Missourians fought on both sides of the war. By contrast, Kansans overwhelmingly fought for the Union.

Terry Beckenbaugh
U. S. Air Force Command and Staff College

By Deborah Keating, University of Missouri – Kansas City

Although Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) led the Union to Civil War victory, his naïveté of the true political climate on the western border caused great turmoil, particularly in Missouri.

By Deborah Keating, University of Missouri – Kansas City

Charles Sumner was a man known for political extremes in a time when the United States was flush with political extremists. As the nation hurdled toward Civil War over the issue of slavery, radicals like Sumner on both sides of the debate aggravated dissension with histrionic rhetoric inflammatory even for the period. Sumner used his powerful voice and speaking ability in support of the abolitionist cause and his acerbic intelligence against those who argued for expansion of slavery into Kansas and enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act. His verbal attacks on Southern legislatures and their constituents led to his being physically attacked on the floor of the House in 1856; an attack which gained him sympathetic support in the North but left him permanently impaired.

By Deborah Keating, University of Missouri – Kansas City

More than most other antebellum politicians, Stephen Douglas is closely linked with “Bleeding Kansas” and the Missouri-Kansas “Border War.” A complex man, strongly partisan but committed to the Constitution as the ultimate law of the land, Douglas sponsored both the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Unintentionally, while trying to prevent secession by pacifying the Southerners, Douglas’s compromises stoked more violence and helped push the United States over the brink and into Civil War.

Ex parte Milligan

Tue, 04/03/1866

The U.S. Supreme Court case Ex parte Milligan rules against the use of military tribunals in areas where civilian courts are established, resulting in important implications for one of the accused Lincoln assassination conspirators.

Radical Reconstruction Begins

Tue, 11/06/1866

Although Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson pursue a moderate course on Reconstruction (generally called "Presidential Reconstruction") by readmitting Southern states into the Union as quickly as possible, the so-called Radical Republicans demand more comprehensive efforts to extend civil rights to freed slaves.

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