I. Dissolution of the Whig Party and Emergence of the Republicans

• Recall that the Republican Party was forged after the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)
  • Whig Party splintered and and died
    • Southern Whigs supported
    • Northern Whigs opposed
      • Some, like Lincoln, move to a new Republican Party opposed to the expansion of slavery
        • First time a national party formed that appealed only to one region
      • Others shift to the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party

II. Lincoln-Douglas Debates: Lincoln comes to prominence

• Clarified fundamental differences between the Democrats and the Republicans on slavery and race
  • Lincoln: Founders wanted to put slavery on the course to extinction
    • Democrats deviating from founders’ intentions
  • Douglas: Founders understood that states’ required different “institutions”
    • No reason why the nation could not endure “half slave, half free”
    • Merged the issue of slavery with the question of racial equality

III. 1860 election

• 4-way race
  • Democratic Party has a raucous convention in Charleston; splits in two
    • Stephen Douglas was the candidate of Northern Dems; John C. Breckinridge the candidate of the Southern Democrats
  • John Bell candidate of the Constitutional Union Party
• Lincoln won with only 40% of the popular vote; 180 of 303 electoral votes, none from the South
  • Name not even on the ballot in many southern states

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Secession

• Dec. 20, 1860: South Carolina secedes
• Jan. 9-March 2, 1861: 6 more states secede
  • MS, FL, AL, GA, LA, TX

Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address

• March 4: Lincoln delivers his inaugural address
  • Reiterates that has no intention of trying to ban slavery where it already exists; has no Constitutional right to do so
  • Insists that individual states have no right to secede
    • Union predates the Constitution
  • States he will strive to see that “the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States”
  • Ending: urges people in the South to slow down; evokes shared Revolutionary heritage; argues reconciliation still possible

“I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

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Lincoln’s whistle-stop trip to DC

Took a two-week trip, stopping at many cities and towns to speak with the public
Traveled on train that could 30 mph; seemed the epitome of progress/modernity
Wanted to reassure populace and understood he was a relative unknown
Two separate reports of an assassination plot in Baltimore led him to change his itinerary
Arrived in DC in disguise, in dark of night
Mocked in the press
III. Battle of Fort Sumter

Crisis had been developing since South Carolina seceded in December
Major Robert Anderson of the US Army had relocated his troops from Fort Moultrie to Sumter
SC prevented an unarmed ship from provisioning the Fort Sumter; seized all other federal property
On April 8, Lincoln says he will send supplies on unarmed ship
Confederate leaders almost unanimously agree it’s an act of aggression that must be answered
April 12-14 battle; Union surrenders; no casualties
IV. Immediate Aftermath

In the North: Lincoln calls on the states to supply 75,000 militiamen for 90 days to suppress the rebellion.
In the South: Virginia secedes, followed by Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee
(SC, MS, AL, LA, GA, FL and TX had already left by the time Lincoln took office. Confederates had met in February in Montgomery, AL, to form their government. They elected Jefferson Davis President on February 9, and he was inaugurated on February 18, a few before Lincoln’s inauguration.)
V. Robert E. Lee

As late as early 1861, Lee was denouncing secession in his correspondence
April 17: Virginia convention voted to secede
April 18: Lincoln requests through intermediary that he command the Union Army
April 20: Lee resigned from US Army
April 23: Lee took up command of the Army of Northern Virginia

Fort Sumter