THE CIVIL WAR
The 1861-1865 American Civil War between the North and South was a struggle between two different ways of life, between the agricultural South and the industrialized North. Slavery was the dividing issue of our Nation from the time of the Revolutionary War. George Washington in his will declared that his slaves would be freed, cared for, and the young educated upon the death of his wife. Thomas Jefferson, though he owned slaves, was deeply troubled by slavery: he sketched out a plan to free all slaves born after 1800, and in 1784 he submitted a proposal to Congress that would prohibit slavery in all Western territories, a proposal which failed by a single vote. The cause of the War was the dispute between the authority of the Federal Union versus State Rights. After all, slavery still existed in four Union states when the Civil War began - Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri, and even the District of Columbia!

Following the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress saw the need for a Confederacy of the States and established a central authority known as the Articles of Confederation, which was drafted on November 15, 1777, and was not ratified by all the States until March 1, 1781. The Congress of the Confederation operated the United States government from March 1, 1781 until March 4, 1789. The Continental Congress was careful to preserve the independence, rights, and privileges of the States. Ever since the tyranny of the British government, there had always existed a tension between State Rights and the power of the Federal Government. The Congress did pass the final version of the Northwest Ordinance on July 13, 1787, which appropriated lands North of the Ohio River and East of the Mississippi River for the development of five future states, a law which did prohibit slavery in that territory. As the Articles of Confederation were overall ineffective, the U. S. Constitution was approved on September 17, 1787, and ratification came with an understanding that a Bill of Rights would be approved to protect the rights of American citizens.

The slavery issue continued to divide the North and the South. A balance was struck by the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that allowed Missouri to enter as a slave state and Maine to enter as a free state. The Missouri Compromise of 1850 temporized matters, but the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which allowed those states to choose for themselves, inflamed matters. This was followed by the regressive Supreme Court Dred Scott decision of 1857, which declared that a Negro was not a citizen of the United States, and Scott's suit for freedom was dismissed. The 1859 raid by the radical abolitionist John Brown on Harper's Ferry was squelched by an unknown U. S. lieutenant colonel named Robert E. Lee, but the raid exposed the passion over the issue.

Abraham Lincoln crystallized the slavery issue in his October 16, 1854 Peoria, Illinois speech:
"Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature - opposition to it is in his love of justice.
These principles are an eternal antagonism;
and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them,
shocks, and throes, and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.
Repeal the Missouri Compromise - repeal all compromises,
repeal the Declaration of Independence - repeal all past history,
you still can not repeal human nature.
It still will be the abundance of man's heart, that slavery extension is wrong;
and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak."
Lincoln lost the 1858 Illinois Senate race to Stephen Douglas, but the Lincoln-Douglas debates brought him national attention for openly discussing the issue at stake:
"A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I believe that the government cannot last as long as America is half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to fall apart - the house to fall.
I do expect that it will become either all one thing or all the other - either all slave or all free.
Either the people against slavery will stop it forever,
or it will become lawful in all the states, old and new, north and south alike."
As is true of the human condition, emotion overruled reason in the end.

The Civil War was an inconceivable tragedy for our nation, and the bloodiest war ever for the USA. Abraham Lincoln held to the literal reading of the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal. The bitter election of 1860 with the nomination of Abraham Lincoln as President led directly to the dissolution of the Union. Referring to the Tenth Amendment of the Bill of Rights, the State of South Carolina was the first to secede from the Union on December 20, 1860 under then President James Buchanan. South Carolina was soon joined by 6 other states by February 1, 1861 - Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. The Southern States met in Montgomery, Alabama and on February 8, 1861 formed the Confederate States of America, and subsequently elected Jefferson Davis President of the Confederacy.

Abraham Lincoln assumed office March 4, 1861. As President, he saw his duty to preserve and protect the Union. Major Robert Anderson at Fort Sumter, under the direction of President Lincoln, refused to surrender Federal Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. The Confederacy opened fire on April 12, 1861 on Fort Sumter, and Major Anderson surrendered the following day. When President Lincoln called for 75,000 troops, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina joined the Confederacy.

The Civil War ended on Palm Sunday, April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, when General Robert E. Lee of the Confederacy surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant of the Union.

The good that came out of the Civil War was the ending of African-American slavery. In keeping with the Declaration of Independence, all human beings have certain God-given rights, among them Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.


THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS
In a tribute to the 52,000 Americans that had been killed, injured or lost in the July 1-3 battle of Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln in his 1863 Gettysburg Address declared that "this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom." Lincoln spoke of the greatness of the sacrifice of the men of both North and South, and his speech is celebrated, along with the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the opening of the Constitution, as one of our most famous national documents.

The Thirteenth through Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution were added after the Civil War to end slavery (1865), to provide equal protection to all that were defined as citizens (1868), and to grant the vote to former slaves (1870).

The belief and expression "Nation under God" later became part of our Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America.


Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation,
conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -
that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom,
and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

November 19, 1863




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