Know-Nothing party: An outgrowth of secret anti-immigrant organizations of the late 1840s and early 1850s. Instructing its members to feign ignorance when asked about it, the party was officially known, from 1854, as the American party. The Know-Nothing impulse lay in the anxieties of native-born citizens over mass arrivals from Catholic Ireland and Germany, and in the failure of the major parties—Whigs and Democrats—to satisfy concerns over crime, liquor, political corruption, the Bible in schools, and other challenges to Protestant values. Many Know-Nothings were staunchly antislavery, and when in June 1855 the national council endorsed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the party’s northern support leached away to the emerging Republican coalition. The American party’s presidential candidate, Millard Fillmore, carried just one state in 1856.
Methodists: see evangelical Protestants
millennialism: The optimistic conviction, shared by most evangelicals, that the nation had a signal role to play in bringing about the Kingdom of God on earth. For Americans of the time, the country’s progress toward a new moral and social order heralded the arrival of the millennial age. The advent of Jesus Christ was not expected until after the millennium: technically most evangelicals of the era were, thus, “postmillennialists.”
Missouri Compromise: The congressional settlement of 1820 which resolved for a political generation the issue of slavery’s expansion, by admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, and by forbidding slavery in the territories of the Louisiana Purchase north of the line 36�30¢.
nativism: The antagonism of native-born Americans toward immigrants, commonly on the grounds of religion and labor competition.
new-school Calvinism: The “modern” or “Arminianized” adaptation of traditional Calvinist beliefs during the early republic, prompted in part by the stunning advance of Methodism. The doctrine took hold particularly amongst New England Congregationalists, and—both in the Northeast and in “Yankee” settlements beyond—Presbyterians. These two denominations numbered some 350,000 members by 1860.
popular sovereignty: The doctrine, most commonly associated with Senator Stephen Douglas and the Democratic party, and first enunciated during the late 1840s, that the people of a U.S. territory had the right to decide if slavery should be allowed within their borders. Douglas incorporated the principle into the territorial provisions of the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Chief Justice Roger B. Taney in the Dred Scott case (1857) seemingly made the doctrine moot.
Preemption Law: Under the congressional act of 1841, ordinary settlers were allowed to occupy public land before it was officially surveyed and to buy 160 acres at a minimum of $1.25 per acre before the land was offered at public auction.
Presbyterians: see evangelical Protestants
Republican party: The political convergence during the mid-1850s of several elements, following the introduction and passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the spread of civil war to “Bleeding Kansas.” Free-soilers, anti-Nebraska Democrats, antislavery Know-Nothings, and “conscience” Whigs coalesced locally at different times and in varying proportions across the North, not necessarily taking the name “Republican.” The party kept radical abolitionism at bay and, adopting the slogan “free soil, free labor, free men,” united in opposition to the extension of slavery and to the Democratic administrations of Pierce and Buchanan. No national organization developed until 1856, when the party ran John C. Frémont for president. During wartime the Republican coalition increasingly took the name “Union party,” as it sought the broadest support for the administration.
territories: Those areas within the national boundaries not fully enjoying the rights of statehood. Once organized by Congress, a territory is governed by an elected legislature and a governor appointed by the president.
Unitarians: The American Unitarian Association, formed in 1825, developed out of liberal Congregationalism. Its adherents espoused a doctrine of universal salvation and the fatherhood of God, rejecting Calvinist predestination and the divinity of Christ. Unitarianism’s heartland was New England, and Boston in particular.
Whig party: Founded in 1834 by the opponents of the “executive tyranny” of “King” Andrew Jackson, the party was a coalition of states’ rights southerners and proponents of Henry Clay’s nationalist economic program (the “American System” of internal improvements, protective tariff, and national bank). The Whigs’ sectional split over slavery—“cotton” versus “conscience”—need not have destroyed the party: it could conceivably have survived in the North as an antislavery force, had not its ambivalence over nativist issues opened the door to the Know-Nothing party. A significant remnant of conservative old-line Whigs in the lower North and border slave states persisted into the late 1850s, and rallied to the standard of the Constitutional Union party in 1860.
Wilmot Proviso: The amendment introduced by a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania, David Wilmot, to an appropriations bill for the war with Mexico, which sought to ban slavery in any territory secured by the conflict. The proviso enjoyed majority support in the House of Representatives but could not overcome in the Senate the opposition orchestrated by supporters of southern rights.
Yankees: a term used to describe the people of New England and its diaspora. “Greater New England” included those parts of the upper North into which New Englanders had migrated westward, including the northern counties of New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. During the Civil War, Confederates used the label to refer contemptuously to all northerners.
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
8 Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM).
13 Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM).
41 Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM).
72 GLC 5111.01.0001. Photograph. Bust portrait of Lincoln. February 28, 1857. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
77 GLC 5111.01.0629. Photograph. Bust portrait Abraham Lincoln. Circa 1858. Copied March 6, 1944. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
77 GLC 3589p10. Photograph. Stephen A. Douglas. 1861–c. 1865. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
99 GLC 5111.02.0001. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. February 27, 1860. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
113 GLC 5111.01.0002. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. May 20, 1860. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
113 GLC 5111.01.0004. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. June 3, 1860. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
115 Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM).
118 Library of Congress.
127 Library of Congress.
129 Library of Congress.
130 Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM).
138 GLC 08565. Photograph. Lincoln and his secretaries (Hay and Nicolay). November 1863, c. 1884. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
146 GLC 5111.01.1328. Photograph. Portrait photo of Abraham Lincoln. March 1861. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
153 GLC 5111.02.0080. Photograph. Salmon P. Chase. Circa 1861. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
153 GLC 5111.02.0094. Photograph. William H. Seward. Circa 1861. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
153 GLC 5111.02.0103. Photograph. Edwin M. Stanton. Circa 1862. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
153 GLC 5
111.02.0107. Photograph. Gideon Welles. Circa 1861. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
157 GLC 5500. Photograph. Winfield Scott. Circa 1860. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
163 Library of Congress.
172 Picture History.
178 GLC 5111.02.0378. Photograph. John Frémont as major-general. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
188 GLC 3589p15. Photograph. George B. McClellan. Circa 1861–65. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
208 Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM).
219 GLC 00004. Signed document. Emancipation Proclamation. January 1, 1863. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
222 Library of Congress.
224 GLC 5136#19. Photograph. Mary Todd Lincoln between Willie and Tad Lincoln. [1860.] The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
224 GLC 5136#16. Photograph. Mary Todd Lincoln. [Washington, D.C., 1861.] The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
227 John Hay Library, Brown University.
230 Library of Congress.
230 Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM) [Volck].
230 Library of Congress [Northern Coat of Arms].
232 GLC 245. Photograph. Portrait of Lincoln. November 8, 1863, reprint c. 1910. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
244 Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM).
245 GLC 6044. Broadside. Inaugural address of President Abraham Lincoln. March 4, 1865. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
254 GLC 3094. Photograph. Albumen of Ulysses S. Grant at time of Lincoln’s funeral. Circa May 1865. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
254 GLC 4504.02. Photograph. William T. Sherman. Circa 1865. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
257 Library of Congress.
260 GLC 5111.02.0015. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. January 8, 1864. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
262 GLC 5111.02.0002. Photograph. Lincoln’s first photographic sitting in Washington. Circa February 24, 1861. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
262 GLC 4584. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. Circa March 1861. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
262 GLC 5111.02.0010. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. Circa 1861. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
262 GLC 05111.02.0015. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. January 8, 1864. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
262 GLC 5111.02.0016. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. January 8, 1864. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
262 GLC 5111.02.0018. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. January 8, 1864. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
262 GLC 5111.02.0022. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. February 9, 1864. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
262 GLC 2911.01. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln and his son Tad. February 1864. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
262 GLC 242.12. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. After February 1864. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
263 GLC 241.01. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. Circa 1865. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
263 GLC 5111.02.0027. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. March 6, 1865. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
265 Library of Congress.
271 GLC 5596.10. Signed photograph. Horace Greeley. 1865. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
271 Collection of The New-York Historical Society [Bennett].
271 Picture History [Forney].
271 Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM) [Raymond].
273 Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM).
280 GLC 5111.02.0138. Photograph. Henry W. Beecher. Circa 1860s. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
280 Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM) [Simpson].
283 Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM) [Frederick].
283 Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM) [Antietam].
283 Louise and Barry Taper Collection [bandage].
298 Library of Congress.
300 Library of Congress.
302 Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM).
303 Louise and Barry Taper Collection.
304 Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (ALPLM).
306 Library of Congress.
306 Library of Congress.
308 GLC 08593back. Newspaper. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. December 3, 1864. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
311 GLC 5111.02.0028. Photograph. Abraham Lincoln. February 5, 1865. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
317 GLC 5136.23. Photograph. John Wilkes Booth. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
318 GLC 6680. Broadside. Edwin M. Stanton. April 15, 1865. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
318 GLC 5136.38. Photograph. Lincoln’s funeral parade on Chestnut Street, Philadelphia. 1865. The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard Carwardine is Rhodes Professor of American History at Oxford University and Fellow of St. Catherine’s College. His publications include Transatlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain and America, 1790–1865 and Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America.
ALSO BY RICHARD CARWARDINE
Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America
Transatlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain and America, 1790–1865
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2003 by Pearson Education Limited
Copyright © 2006 by Richard Carwardine
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Originally published in Great Britain in slightly different form by Pearson Education Limited, London, in 2003.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Carwardine, Richard.
Lincoln: a life of purpose and power / Richard Carwardine.
p. cm.
Originally published: Harlow, England : Pearson/Longman, 2003.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Lincoln
, Abraham, 1809–1865. 2. Presidents—United States—Biography. 3. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865. 4. United States—Politics and government—1861–1865. 5. United States—Politics and government—1815–1861. I. Title
e457.c43 2006
973.7'092—dc22 2005047230
eISBN: 978-0-307-26467-1
v3.0
Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power Page 51
