document_title: Constitutional Convention (United States)

question_text: who was elected president of the constitutional convention and why

question_tokens: who was elected president of the constitutional convention and why

text: Constitutional Convention (United States)

text: Historical context[edit]

text: Before the Constitution was drafted, the nearly 4 million inhabitants[4] of the 13 newly independent states were governed under the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, created by the Second Continental Congress. It soon became evident to nearly all that the chronically underfunded Confederation government, as originally organized, was inadequate for managing the various conflicts that arose among the states.[5]:4–5[6]:14–16 As the Articles of Confederation could only be amended by unanimous vote of the states, any state had effective veto power over any proposed change.[7] In addition, the Articles gave the weak federal government no taxing power: it was wholly dependent on the states for its money, and had no power to force delinquent states to pay.[7]

text: Once the immediate task of winning the American Revolutionary War of 1775 to 1783 had passed, the states began to look to their own interests, and disputes arose. These included a dispute between Maryland and Virginia over the Potomac River and opposition to Rhode Island's imposing taxes on all traffic passing through it on the post road. James Madison suggested that state governments should appoint commissioners "to take into consideration the trade of the United States; to examine the relative situation and trade of said states; to consider how far a uniform system in their commercial regulations may be necessary to their common interests and permanent harmony".[8]:92

text: Another impetus for the convention was Shays' Rebellion of 1786-1787. A political conflict between Boston merchants and rural farmers over issues including tax debts had broken out into an open rebellion. This rebellion was led by a former Revolutionary War captain, Daniel Shays, a small farmer with tax debts, who had never received payment for his service in the Continental Army. The rebellion took months for Massachusetts to put down completely, and some desired a federal army that would be able to put down such insurrections.

text: In September 1786, at the Annapolis Convention, delegates from five states called for a Constitutional Convention in order to discuss possible improvements to the Articles of Confederation. The subsequent Constitutional Convention took place in Philadelphia, convening in the Old Pennsylvania State House (then becoming known as Independence Hall) on May 14, 1787. Rhode Island, fearing that the Convention would work to its disadvantage, boycotted the Convention and, when the Constitution was put to the states during the next year of controversial debates, initially refused to ratify it, waiting until May 1790 to become the thirteenth, a year after the new federal government commenced.[9]

text: The Convention[edit]

text: Due to the difficulty of travel in the late 18th century, very few of the selected delegates were present on the designated day of May 14, 1787, and it was not until May 25 that a quorum of seven states was secured. (New Hampshire delegates would not join the Convention until more than halfway through the proceedings, on July 23.)[5]:103 James Madison arrived first, and soon most of the Virginia delegation arrived. While waiting for the other delegates, the Virginia delegation produced the Virginia Plan, which was designed and written by James Madison. On May 25, the delegations convened in the Pennsylvania State House.

text: George Washington was unanimously elected president of the Convention,[10] and it was agreed that the discussions and votes would be kept secret until the conclusion of the meeting.[5]:11 Despite the sweltering summer heat, the windows of the meeting hall were nailed shut to keep the proceedings a secret from the public.[History Alive! 1] Although William Jackson was elected as secretary, his records were brief and included very little detail. Madison's Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, supplemented by the notes of Robert Yates, remain the most complete record of the Convention.[5]:162–64 Throughout the debate, delegates constantly referred to precedents from history in support of their position. Most commonly, they referred to the history of England, in particular the Glorious Revolution (often simply called "The Revolution"), classical history (mainly the Roman Republic and the leagues of Greek city-states), and recent precedents from Holland and Germany.

text: Outside the Convention in Philadelphia, there was a national convening of the Society of the Cincinnati. Washington was said to be embarrassed. The 1776 "old republican" delegates like Elbridge Gerry (MA) found anything military or hereditary anathema. The Presbyterian Synod of Philadelphia and New York convention was meeting to redefine its Confession, dropping the faith requirement for civil authority to prohibit false worship.[11] Protestant Episcopalian Washington attended a Roman Catholic Mass and dinner.[12] Revolution veteran Jonas Phillips, of the Mikveh Israel Synagogue, petitioned the Convention to avoid a national oath including belief in both Old and New Testaments. Merchants of Providence, Rhode Island, petitioned for consideration, though their Assembly had not sent a delegation.[13]

text: Manasseh Cutler came directly from the capital in New York and found himself a frequent dinner guest among the delegates. He carried grants of five million acres to parcel out among The Ohio Company and "speculators", including some who were attending the Convention.[a] A Philadelphia guest of Robert Morris, Noah Webster would write a pamphlet immediately after the signing. "Leading Principles of the Federal Convention" advocated adoption of the Constitution. It was published much earlier and more widely circulated than today's better known Federalist Papers.[15]

text: James Madison's blueprint[edit]

text: While waiting for the Convention to formally begin, James Madison sketched out his initial draft, which became known as the Virginia Plan and reflected his views as a strong nationalist.[6]:47 By the time the rest of the Virginia delegation arrived, most of the Pennsylvania delegation had arrived as well. They agreed on Madison's plan, and formed what came to be the predominant coalition. By the time the Convention started, the only blueprints that had been assembled were Madison's Virginia Plan, and Charles Pinckney's plan. As Pinckney didn't have a coalition behind his plan, Madison's plan was the starting point for deliberations.[6]:47

text: The Convention agreed on several principles. Most importantly, they agreed that the Convention should go beyond its mandate merely to amend the Articles of Confederation, and instead should produce a new constitution outright. While some delegates thought this illegal, the Articles of Confederation were closer to a treaty between sovereign states than they were to a national constitution, so the genuine legal problems were limited.[6]:64 Another principle they agreed on was that the new government would have all the powers of the Confederation Congress, plus additional powers over the states.[6]:64 Once agreeing on these principles, the Convention voted on the Virginia plan and signaled their approval for it. Once this was done, they began modifying it.

text: Madison's plan operated on several assumptions that were not seriously challenged. During the deliberations, few raised serious objections to the planned bicameral congress, nor the separate executive function, nor the separate judicial function.[6]:67 As English law had typically recognized government as having two separate functions, law making embodied in the legislature, and law executing embodied in the king and his courts, the division of the legislature from the executive and judiciary was a natural and uncontested point.[10]

text: The division of the legislature into an upper and lower house wasn't questioned either, despite the obscure origins of the English House of Lords and its role as the representative of the hereditary nobility.[6]:82 Americans had seldom known any but bicameral legislatures, both in Britain and in most state governments. The main exceptions to this were the dysfunctional Confederation Congress and the unicameral Pennsylvania legislature, which was seen as quickly vacillating between partisan extremes after each election.[6]:82 Experience had convinced the delegates that an upper house was necessary to tame the passions of the lower classes against the interests of wealthy merchants and landowners. Since America had no native hereditary aristocracy, the character of this upper house was designed to protect the interests of this wealthy elite, the "minority of the opulent," against the interests of the lower classes, who constituted the majority of the population.[6]:85[16]

text:
In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The Senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability.

—James Madison, quoted in Notes of the Secret Debates of the Federal Convention of 1787 by Robert Yates

tag: div

text: On Thursday, June 7, it was proposed that senators should be chosen directly by the state legislatures, instead of by popular vote, as this method was more likely to preserve the power of the upper classes. Convention delegate Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts observed that "the great mercantile interest and of stockholders, is not provided for in any mode of election-they will however be better represented if the State legislatures choose the second branch."[16] The proposal was carried unanimously.

text: The delegates also agreed with Madison that the executive function had to be independent of the legislature. In their aversion to kingly power, American legislatures had created state governments where the executive was beholden to the legislature, and by the late 1780s this was widely seen as being a source of paralysis.[6]:82 The Confederation government was the ultimate example of this.

text: Furthermore, in the English tradition, judges were seen as being agents of the King and his court, who represented him throughout his realm.[10] Madison believed that in the American states, this direct link between state executives and judges was a source of corruption through patronage, and thought the link had to be severed between the two, thus creating the "third branch" of the judiciary which had been without any direct precedent before this point.[10] Madison, however, did not believe that the judiciary should be truly independent, but rather beholden to the legislature rather than the executive. At the Convention, some sided with Madison that the legislature should choose judges, while others believed the president should choose judges. A compromise was eventually reached that the president should choose judges and the Senate confirm them.[6]:84

text: In a few areas, Madison's plan included provisions that had little support among the delegates. Few agreed with Madison that the legislature should be able to invalidate state laws, so the idea was dropped. While most thought there should be some mechanism to invalidate bad laws by congress, few agreed with Madison that a board of the executive and judges should decide on this. Instead, the power was given solely to the executive in the form of the veto. Many also thought this would be useful to protect the executive, whom many worried might become beholden to an imperial legislature.[6]:141 Also, during the deliberations, the New Jersey Plan was introduced, although it was more of a protest to the excessive national character of the Virginia plan, and was not seriously considered.[6]:230 The office of Vice President was also included later in the deliberations, mainly to provide the president a successor if he was unable to complete his term but also to provide presidential electors with an incentive to vote for at least one out of state candidate in addition to a "favorite son" from their own state or region.

text: The early debate[edit]

text: Each state was allowed to cast a single vote either for or against a proposal during the debates in accordance with the majority opinion of the state's delegates.[5]:83 Throughout the Convention, delegates would regularly come and go, with only 30–40 being present on a typical day.[5]:83 Consequently, if a state's delegates were equally divided in their views on a given proposal, or if too few of the state's delegates were in attendance to establish a quorum for the delegation when votes were being cast on a particular proposal, that state's delegation had essentially no effect on the outcome of the vote on the proposal. Thus, for example, after two of New York's three delegates abandoned the Convention in mid July with no intention of returning, New York was left unable to vote on any further proposals at the Convention, although Hamilton would continue to periodically attend and occasionally to speak during the debates.[5]:83

text:
All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well born, the other the mass of the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government. Can a democratic assembly, who annually revolve in the mass of the people, be supposed steadily to pursue the public good? Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy. Their turbulent and uncontroling disposition requires checks.

—Alexander Hamilton, quoted in Notes of the Secret Debates of the Federal Convention of 1787 by Robert Yates

text: The first area of major dispute was the manner by which the lower house would be apportioned. A minority wanted it to be apportioned so that all states would have equal weight, though this was never seriously considered. Most wanted it apportioned in accordance with some mixture of property and population.[6]:117 Though there was discussion on how to calculate property for this purpose, the issue of property was later dropped because of its difficulty, and an assumption that property would closely correlate to population.

text: Most accepted the desire among the slave states to count slaves as part of the population, although their servile status was raised as a major objection against this. The Three-Fifths Compromise assessing population by adding the number of free persons to three-fifths of "all other persons" (slaves) was agreed to without serious dispute.[6]:119 In 1783, when attempting to assess a national taxation system, the Confederation Congress had considered a three fifths ratio, which did not achieve unanimity.[6]:119[17] This compromise resulted in a large coalition of states, including the small slave states of South Carolina and Georgia, backing the Virginia plan and thus expanding the power of the primary coalition. That the lower house was to be elected directly by the voters was also accepted without major dispute.[6]:119

text: More contentious than the lower house was the question of the upper house. Few agreed with Madison that its members should be elected by the lower house. James Wilson suggested election by popular vote versus election by state legislature, but his proposal was shot down 10–1 by the delegates.[18] Most delegates didn't question the intelligence of the voters,[citation needed] rather what concerned them was the slowness by which information spread in the late 18th century.[6]:122

text: At the time of the Convention, they noted that local newspapers said little of current events, and what little they had was sketchy and dated. Local papers even said little about the meeting of the Convention.[citation needed] Alexander Hamilton proposed extending the term in office for senators to life, considering earlier proposals of four and seven years inefficient to enable the "rich and well born" to have a "distinct, permanent share in the government," which could "check the imprudence of democracy."[16] Moreover, Hamilton proposed that senators not be elected directly by the general public, but by "electors" chosen for that purpose.

text: Besides the problems of direct election, the new Constitution was seen as such a radical break with the old system, by which delegates were elected to the Confederation Congress by state legislatures, that the Convention agreed to retain this method of electing senators to make the constitutional change less radical.[6]:122 The more difficult problem was the issue of apportionment. The Connecticut delegation offered a compromise, whereby the number of representatives for each state in the lower house would be apportioned based on the relative size of the state's population, while the number of representatives in the upper house would be the same for all of the states, irrespective of size. The large states, fearing a diminution of their influence in the legislature under this plan, opposed this proposal. Unable to reach agreement, the delegates decided to leave this issue for further consideration later during the meeting.

text: The delegates couldn't agree on whether the executive should be a single person, or a board of three. Many wished to limit the power of the executive and thus supported the proposal to divide the executive power between three persons.[6]:134 The possible problems of this system, in addition to the knowledge that George Washington would probably be the first president,[citation needed] calmed the fears enough so that the proponents of a singular executive could accumulate a large coalition.[6]:134 This issue came up occasionally after the matter was settled, but was never again seriously doubted.

text: Another issue concerned the election of the president. Few agreed with Madison that the executive should be elected by the legislature. There was widespread concern with direct election, because information diffused so slowly in the late 18th century, and because of concerns that people would only vote for candidates from their state or region. A vocal minority wanted the national executive to be chosen by the governors of the states.[6]:136

text: The issue was one of the last major issues to be resolved, and was done so in the electoral college. At the time, before the formation of modern political parties, there was widespread concern that candidates would routinely fail to secure a majority of electors in the electoral college. The method of resolving this problem therefore was a contested issue. Most thought that the house should then choose the president, since it most closely reflected the will of the people. This caused dissension among delegates from smaller states, who realized that this would put their states at a disadvantage. To resolve this dispute, the Convention agreed that the house would elect the president if no candidate had an electoral college majority, but that each state delegation would vote as a bloc, rather than individually.[6]:136

text: As the Convention was entering its second full month of deliberations, it was decided that further consideration of the prickly question of how to apportion representatives in the national legislature should be referred to a committee composed of one delegate from each of the eleven states that were present at that time at the Convention. The members of this "Grand Committee," as it has come to be known, included Elbridge Gerry, Oliver Ellsworth, Robert Yates, William Paterson, Gunning Bedford, Jr., George Mason, William Davie, John Rutledge, Abraham Baldwin, and Benjamin Franklin. In its report to the Convention on July 5, the committee offered a compromise. The large states had opposed the Connecticut Compromise, because they felt it gave too much power to the smaller states. The Grand Committee's proposal added the requirement that revenue bills originate in the lower house and not be subject to modification by the upper house (although this Origination Clause would later be modified so that revenue bills could be amended in the upper house, or Senate).[6]:199 With this modification, the Convention in a close vote adopted the compromise on July 16. Nationalist delegates remained bitterly opposed, however, until on July 23 they succeeded in further modifying the compromise to give members of the Senate individual voting power, rather than having votes taken by each state's representatives en bloc, as had occurred in Congress under the Articles of Confederation.[19] This accomplished the nationalist goal of preventing state governments from having a direct say in Congress's choice to make national laws.[20] The final document was thus a mixture of Madison's original "national" constitution and the desired "federal" Constitution that many of the delegates sought.[6]:199

text: The first draft[edit]

text: The Convention adjourned from July 26 to August 6 to await the report of the Committee of Detail, which was to produce a first draft of the Constitution. It was chaired by John Rutledge, with the other members including Edmund Randolph, Oliver Ellsworth, James Wilson, and Nathaniel Gorham.

text: Though the committee did not record minutes of its proceedings, three key surviving documents offer clues to the committee's handiwork: an outline by Randolph with edits by Rutledge, extensive notes and a second draft by Wilson, also with Rutledge's edits, and the committee's final report to the Convention.[21]:168 From this evidence it is thought that the committee used the original Virginia Plan, the decisions of the Convention on modifications to that plan, and other sources, such as the Articles of Confederation, provisions of the state constitutions, and even Charles Pinckney's plan, to produce the first full draft,[6]:269–70[21]:165 which author David O. Stewart has called a "remarkable copy-and-paste job."[21]:165

text: Randolph adopted two rules in preparing his initial outline: that the Constitution should only include essential principles, avoiding minor provisions that would change over time, and that it should be stated in simple and precise language.[6]:270

text: Much of what was included in the committee's report consisted of numerous details that the Convention had never discussed but which the committee correctly viewed as uncontroversial and unlikely to be challenged; and as such, much of the committee's proposal would ultimately be incorporated into the final version of the Constitution without debate.[21]:169 Examples of these details included the Speech and Debate Clause, which grants members of Congress immunity for comments made in their jobs, and the rules for organizing the House of Representatives and the Senate.

text: However, Rutledge, himself a former state governor, was determined that while the new national government should be stronger than the Confederation government had been, the national government's power over the states should not be limitless; and at Rutledge's urging, the committee went beyond what the Convention had proposed. As Stewart describes it, the committee "hijacked" and remade the Constitution, altering critical agreements the Convention delegates had already made, enhancing the powers of the states at the expense of the national government, and adding several far-reaching provisions that the Convention had never discussed.[21]:165

text: The first major change, insisted on by Rutledge, was meant to sharply curtail the essentially unlimited powers to legislate "in all cases for the general interests of the Union" that the Convention only two weeks earlier had agreed to grant the Congress. Rutledge and Randolph worried that the broad powers implied in the language agreed on by the Convention would have given the national government too much power at the expense of the states. In Randolph's outline the committee replaced that language with a list of 18 specific "enumerated" powers, many adopted from the Articles of Confederation, that would strictly limit the Congress' authority to measures such as imposing taxes, making treaties, going to war, and establishing post offices.[6]:273–74[21]:170–71 Rutledge, however, was not able to completely convince all of the members of the committee to accept the change. Over the course of a series of drafts, a catchall provision (the "Necessary and Proper Clause") was eventually added, most likely by Wilson, a nationalist little concerned with the sovereignty of individual states, giving the Congress the broad power "to make all Laws that shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof."[6]:274[21]:171–72 Another revision of Wilson's draft also placed eight specific limits on the states, such as barring them from independently entering into treaties and from printing their own money, providing a certain degree of balance to the limits on the national government intended by Rutledge's list of enumerated powers.[6]:274–75[21]:172 In addition, Wilson's draft modified the language of the Supremacy Clause adopted by the Convention, to ensure that national law would take precedence over inconsistent state laws.[21]:172

text: These changes set the final balance between the national and state governments that would be entered into the final document, as the Convention never challenged this dual-sovereignty between nation and state that had been fashioned by Rutledge and Wilson.[21]:172

text: Another set of radical changes introduced by the Committee of Detail proved far more contentious when the committee's report was presented to the Convention. On the day the Convention had agreed to appoint the committee, Southerner Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, of South Carolina, had warned of dire consequences should the committee fail to include protections for slavery in the Southern states, or allow for taxing of Southern agricultural exports.[6]:269, 275[21]:173 Pinckney and his fellow Southern delegates must have been delighted to see that the committee had included three provisions that explicitly restricted the Congress' authority in ways favorable to Southern interests. The proposed language would bar the Congress from ever interfering with the slave trade. It would also prohibit taxation of exports, and would require that any legislation concerning regulation of foreign commerce through tariffs or quotas (that is, any laws akin to England's "Navigation Acts") pass only with two-thirds majorities of both houses of Congress. While much of the rest of the committee's report would be accepted without serious challenge on the Convention floor, these last three proposals would provoke outrage from Northern delegates and slavery opponents.[6]:275[21]:173–74

text: The final report of the committee, which became the first draft of the Constitution, was the first workable constitutional plan, as Madison's Virginia Plan had simply been an outline of goals and a broad structure. Even after it issued this report, the committee continued to meet off and on until early September.

text: Further modifications and concluding debate[edit]

text: Another month of discussion and relatively minor refinement followed, during which several attempts were made to alter the Rutledge draft, though few were successful. Some wanted to add property qualifications for people to hold office, while others wanted to prevent the national government from issuing paper money.[21]:187 Madison in particular wanted to push the Constitution back in the direction of his Virginia plan.

text: One important change that did make it into the final version included the agreement between northern and southern delegates to empower Congress to end the slave trade starting in 1808. Southern and northern delegates also agreed to strengthen the Fugitive Slave Clause in exchange for removing a requirement that two-thirds of Congress agree on "navigation acts" (regulations of commerce between states and foreign governments). The two-thirds requirement was favored by southern delegates, who thought Congress might pass navigation acts that would be economically harmful to slaveholders.[21]:196

text: Once the Convention had finished amending the first draft from the Committee of Detail, a new set of unresolved questions were sent to several different committees for resolution. The Committee of Detail was considering several questions related to habeas corpus, freedom of the press, and an executive council to advise the president. Two committees addressed questions related to the slave trade and the assumption of war debts.

text: A new committee was created, the Committee on Postponed Parts, to address other questions that had been postponed. Its members, such as Madison, were delegates who had shown a greater desire for compromise and were chosen for this reason as most in the Convention wanted to finish their work and go home.[21]:207 The committee dealt with questions related to the taxes, war making, patents and copyrights, relations with Indian tribes, and Franklin's compromise to require money bills to originate in the House. The biggest issue they addressed was the presidency, and the final compromise was written by Madison with the committee's input.[21]:209 They adopted Wilson's earlier plan for choosing the president by an electoral college, and settled on the method of choosing the president if no candidate had an electoral college majority, which many such as Madison thought would be "nineteen times out of twenty".

text: The committee also shortened the president's term from seven years to four years, freed the president to seek re-election after an initial term, and moved impeachment trials from the courts to the Senate. They also created the office of the vice president, whose only roles were to succeed a president unable to complete a term of office, to preside over the Senate, and to cast tie-breaking votes in the Senate. The committee transferred important powers from the Senate to the president, for example the power to make treaties and appoint ambassadors.[21]:212 One controversial issue throughout much of the Convention had been the length of the president's term, and whether the president was to be term limited. The problem had resulted from the understanding that the president would be chosen by Congress; the decision to have the president be chosen instead by an electoral college reduced the chance of the president becoming beholden to Congress, so a shorter term with eligibility for re-election became a viable option.

text: Near the end of the Convention, Gerry, Randolph, and Mason emerged as the main force of opposition. Their fears were increased as the Convention moved from Madison's vague Virginia Plan to the concrete plan of Rutledge's Committee of Detail.[21]:235 Some have argued that Randolph's attacks on the Constitution were motivated by political ambition, in particular his anticipation of possibly facing rival Patrick Henry in a future election. The main objection of the three was the compromise that would allow Congress to pass "navigation acts" with a simple majority in exchange for strengthened slave provisions.[21]:236 Among their other objections was an opposition to the office of vice president.

text: Though most of their complaints did not result in changes, a couple did. Mason succeeded in adding "high crimes and misdemeanors" to the impeachment clause. Gerry also convinced the Convention to include a second method for ratification of amendments. The report out of the Committee of Detail had included only one mechanism for constitutional amendment, in which two-thirds of the states had to ask Congress to convene a convention for consideration of amendments. Upon Gerry's urging, the Convention added back the Virginia Plan's original method whereby Congress would propose amendments that the states would then ratify.[21]:238 All amendments to the Constitution, save the 21st amendment, have been made through this latter method.

text: Despite their successes, these three dissenters grew increasingly unpopular as most other delegates wanted to bring the Convention's business to an end and return home. As the Convention was drawing to a conclusion, and delegates prepared to refer the Constitution to the Committee on Style to pen the final version, one delegate raised an objection over civil trials. He wanted to guarantee the right to a jury trial in civil matters, and Mason saw in this a larger opportunity. Mason told the Convention that the constitution should include a bill of rights, which he thought could be prepared in a few hours. Gerry agreed, though the rest of the committee overruled them. They wanted to go home, and thought this was nothing more than another delaying tactic.[21]:241

text: Few at the time realized how important the issue would become, with the absence of a bill of rights becoming the main argument of the anti-Federalists against ratification. Most of the Convention's delegates thought that states already protected individual rights, and that the Constitution did not authorize the national government to take away rights, so there was no need to include protections of rights. Once the Convention moved beyond this point, the delegates addressed a couple of last-minute issues. Importantly, they modified the language that required spending bills to originate in the House of Representatives and be flatly accepted or rejected, unmodified, by the Senate. The new language empowered the Senate to modify spending bills proposed by the House.[21]:243

text: Drafting and signing[edit]

text: Once the final modifications had been made, the Committee of Style and Arrangement was appointed "to revise the style of and arrange the articles which had been agreed to by the house." Unlike other committees, whose members were named so the committees included members from different regions, this final committee included no champions of the small states. Its members were mostly in favor of a strong national government and unsympathetic to calls for states' rights.[21]:229–30 They were William Samuel Johnson (Connecticut), Alexander Hamilton (New York), Gouverneur Morris (Pennsylvania), James Madison (Virginia), and Rufus King (Massachusetts). On Wednesday, September 12, the report of the "committee of style" was ordered printed for the convenience of the delegates. For three days, the Convention compared this final version with the proceedings of the Convention. The Constitution was then ordered engrossed on Saturday, September 15 by Jacob Shallus, and was submitted for signing on September 17. It made at least one important change to what the Convention had agreed to; King wanted to prevent states from interfering in contracts. Although the Convention never took up the matter, his language was now inserted, creating the contract clause.[21]:243

text: Gouverneur Morris is credited, both now and then, as the chief draftsman of the final document, including the stirring preamble. Not all the delegates were pleased with the results; thirteen left before the ceremony, and three of those remaining refused to sign: Edmund Randolph of Virginia, George Mason of Virginia, and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts. George Mason demanded a Bill of Rights if he was to support the Constitution. The Bill of Rights was not included in the Constitution submitted to the states for ratification, but many states ratified the Constitution with the understanding that a bill of rights would soon follow.[23] Shortly before the document was to be signed, Gorham proposed to lower the size of congressional districts from 40,000 to 30,000 citizens. A similar measure had been proposed earlier, and failed by one vote. George Washington spoke up here, making his only substantive contribution to the text of the Constitution in supporting this move. The Convention adopted it without further debate. Gorham would sign the document, although he had openly doubted whether the United States would remain a single, unified nation for more than 150 years.[21]:112 Ultimately, 39 of the original 55 delegates ended up signing, but it is likely that none were completely satisfied. Their views were summed up by Benjamin Franklin, who said,

text: I confess that There are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them. ... I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution. ... It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies ...[24]

text: Rhode Island never sent delegates, and two of New York's three delegates did not stay at the Convention for long. Therefore, as George Washington stated, the document was executed by "eleven states, and Colonel Hamilton."[21]:244 Washington signed the document first, and then moving by state delegation from north to south, as had been the custom throughout the Convention, the delegates filed to the front of the room to sign their names.

text: At the time the document was signed, Franklin gave a persuasive speech involving an anecdote on a sun that was painted on the back of Washington's Chippendale chair.[25] As recounted in Madison's notes:

text: Whilst the last members were signing it Doctor. Franklin looking towards the Presidents Chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that Painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. I have said he, often and often in the course of the Session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting: But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun.[25][26]

text: The Constitution was then submitted to the states for ratification, pursuant to its own Article VII.[27]

text: Proposed plans[edit]

text: Several plans were introduced, with the most important plan being that of James Madison (the Virginia Plan). The Convention's work was mostly a matter of modifying this plan. Charles Pinckney also introduced a plan, although this wasn't considered and its exact character has been lost to history. After the Convention was well under way, the New Jersey Plan was introduced though never seriously considered.[6]:230 It was mainly a protest to what some delegates thought was the excessively radical change from the Articles of Confederation.[6]:230 Alexander Hamilton also offered a plan after the Convention was well under way, though it included an executive serving for life and therefore the delegates felt it too closely resembled a monarchy.[6]:137 Historians are unsure how serious he was about this, and some have speculated that he may have done it to make Madison's plan look moderate by comparison.[6]:137 The Connecticut Compromise wasn't a plan but one of several compromises offered by the Connecticut delegation. It was key to the ultimate ratification of the constitution, but was only included after being modified by Benjamin Franklin in order to make it more appealing to larger states.[6]:199

text: Virginia Plan[edit]

text: Prior to the start of the Convention, the Virginian delegates met and, drawing largely from Madison's suggestions, came up with what came to be known as the Virginia Plan, also known as the Large State Plan.[28] For this reason, James Madison is sometimes called the Father of the Constitution.[28] Presented by Virginia governor Edmund Randolph on May 29, 1787, the Virginia Plan proposed a very powerful bicameral legislature.[28] Both houses of the legislature would be determined proportionately.[28] The lower house would be elected by the people, and the upper house would be elected by the lower house.[28] The executive would exist solely to ensure that the will of the legislature was carried out and would therefore be selected by the legislature.[28] The Virginia Plan also created a judiciary, and gave both the executive and some of the judiciary the power to veto, subject to override.

text: New Jersey Plan[edit]

text: After the Virginia Plan was introduced, New Jersey delegate William Paterson asked for an adjournment to contemplate the Plan.[28] Under the Articles of Confederation, each state had equal representation in Congress, exercising one vote each.[28] The Virginia Plan threatened to limit the smaller states' power by making both houses of the legislature proportionate to population. On June 14 and 15, 1787, a small-state caucus met to create a response to the Virginia Plan. The result was the New Jersey Plan, otherwise known as the Small State Plan.[28]

text: Paterson's New Jersey Plan was ultimately a rebuttal to the Virginia Plan, and was much closer to the initial call for the Convention: drafting amendments to the Articles of Confederation to fix the problems in it.[28] Under the New Jersey Plan, the existing Continental Congress would remain, but it would be granted new powers, such as the power to levy taxes and force their collection.[28] An executive branch was created, to be elected by Congress (the plan allowed for a multi-person executive).[28] The executives would serve a single term and were subject to recall on the request of state governors.[28] The plan also created a judiciary that would serve for life, to be appointed by the executives.[28] Lastly, any laws set by Congress would take precedence over state laws.[28] When Paterson reported the plan to the Convention on June 15, 1787, it was ultimately rejected, but it gave the smaller states a rallying point for their interests.[28]

text: Hamilton's plan[edit]

text: Unsatisfied with the New Jersey Plan and the Virginia Plan, Alexander Hamilton proposed his own plan. It also was known as the British Plan, because of its resemblance to the British system of strong centralized government.[28] In his plan, Hamilton advocated virtually doing away with state sovereignty and consolidating the states into a single nation.[28] The plan featured a bicameral legislature, the lower house elected by the people for three years. The upper house would be elected by electors chosen by the people and would serve for life.[28] The plan also gave the Governor, an executive elected by electors for a life-term of service, an absolute veto over bills.[28] State governors would be appointed by the national legislature,[28] and the national legislature had veto power over any state legislation.[28]

text: Hamilton presented his plan to the Convention on June 18, 1787.[28] The plan was perceived as a well-thought-out plan, but it was not considered, because it resembled the British system too closely.[28] It also contemplated the loss of most state authority, which the states were unwilling to allow.

text: Pinckney's plan[edit]

text: Immediately after Randolph finished laying out the Virginia Plan, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina presented his own plan to the Convention. As Pinckney did not write it down, the only evidence of the plan are Madison's notes,[29] so the details are somewhat vague. It was a confederation, or treaty, among the thirteen states. There was to be a bicameral legislature made up of a Senate and a House of Delegates. The House would have one member for every one thousand inhabitants. The House would elect Senators who would serve by rotation for four years and represent one of four regions. Congress would meet in a joint session to elect a President, and would also appoint members of the cabinet. Congress, in joint session, would serve as the court of appeal of last resort in disputes between states. Pinckney did also provide for a supreme Federal Judicial Court. The Pinckney plan was not debated, but it may have been referred to by the Committee of Detail.[30]

text: Connecticut Compromise[edit]

text: The Connecticut Compromise, forged by Roger Sherman from Connecticut, was proposed on June 11.[28] In a sense it blended the Virginia (large-state) and New Jersey (small-state) proposals. Ultimately, however, its main contribution was in determining the apportionment of the Senate, and thus retaining a federal character in the constitution. Sherman sided with the two-house national legislature of the Virginia Plan, but proposed "That the proportion of suffrage in the 1st. branch [house] should be according to the respective numbers of free inhabitants; and that in the second branch or Senate, each State should have one vote and no more."[28] This plan failed at first, but on July 23 the question was finally settled.[28]

text: What was ultimately included in the constitution was a modified form of this plan. In the Grand Committee, Benjamin Franklin successfully proposed the requirement that revenue bills originate in the house. But the final July 16 vote on the compromise still left the Senate looking like the Confederation Congress. In the preceding weeks of debate, Madison, King, and Gouverneur Morris each vigorously opposed the compromise for this reason.[31] Then on July 23, just before most of the convention's work was referred to the Committee of Detail, Morris and King moved that state representatives in the Senate be given individual votes, rather than voting en bloc, as they had in the Confederation Congress. Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, a leading proponent of the compromise, supported their motion, and the Convention adopted it.[19] As the personally powerful senators were to receive terms much longer than the state legislators who appointed them, they became substantially independent. The compromise nonetheless continued to serve the self-interest of small-state political leaders, who were assured of access to more seats in the Senate than they might otherwise have obtained.[20]

text: Slavery[edit]

text: Among the most controversial issues confronting the delegates was that of slavery. Slavery was widespread in the states at the time of the Convention.[21]:68 At least a third of the Convention's 55 delegates owned slaves, including all of the delegates from Virginia and South Carolina.[21]:68–69 Slaves comprised approximately one-fifth of the population of the states;[32]:139 and apart from northernmost New England, where slavery had largely been eliminated, slaves lived throughout all regions of the country.[32]:132 The majority of the slaves (more than 90%),[32]:132 however, lived in the South, where approximately 1 in 3 families owned slaves (in the largest and wealthiest state, Virginia, that figure was nearly 1 in 2 families).[32]:135 The entire agrarian economy of the South was based on slave labor, and the Southern delegates to the Convention were unwilling to accept any proposals that they believed would threaten the institution.

text: Commerce and Slave Trade Compromise[edit]

text: Whether slavery was to be regulated under the new Constitution was a matter of such intense conflict between the North and South that several Southern states refused to join the Union if slavery were not to be allowed. Delegates opposed to slavery were forced to yield in their demands that slavery practiced within the confines of the new nation be completely outlawed. However, they continued to argue that the Constitution should prohibit the states from participating in the international slave trade, including in the importation of new slaves from Africa and the export of slaves to other countries. The Convention postponed making a final decision on the international slave trade until late in the deliberations because of the contentious nature of the issue. During the Convention's late July recess, the Committee of Detail had inserted language that would prohibit the federal government from attempting to ban international slave trading and from imposing taxes on the purchase or sale of slaves. The Convention could not agree on these provisions when the subject came up again in late August, so they referred the matter to an eleven-member committee for further discussion. This committee helped work out a compromise: Congress would have the power to ban the international slave trade, but not for another twenty years (that is, not until 1808). In exchange for this concession, the federal government's power to regulate foreign commerce would be strengthened by provisions that allowed for taxation of slave trades in the international market and that reduced the requirement for passage of navigation acts from two-thirds majorities of both houses of Congress to simple majorities.[6]:318–29

text: Three-Fifths Compromise[edit]

text: Another contentious slavery-related question was whether slaves would be counted as part of the population in determining representation of the states in the Congress, or would instead be considered property and as such not be considered for purposes of representation.[33] Delegates from states with a large population of slaves argued that slaves should be considered persons in determining representation, but as property if the new government were to levy taxes on the states on the basis of population.[33] Delegates from states where slavery had become rare argued that slaves should be included in taxation, but not in determining representation.[33] Finally, delegate James Wilson proposed the Three-Fifths Compromise.[28] This was eventually adopted by the Convention.

text: Framers of the Constitution[edit]

text: Fifty-five delegates attended sessions of the Constitutional Convention, and are considered the Framers of the Constitution, although only 39 delegates actually signed.[34][35] The states had originally appointed 70 representatives to the Convention, but a number of the appointees did not accept or could not attend, leaving 55 who would ultimately craft the Constitution.[34]

text: Almost all of the 55 Framers had taken part in the Revolution, with at least 29 having served in the Continental forces, most in positions of command.[36] All but two or three had served in colonial or state government during their careers.[6]:65 The vast majority (about 75%) of the delegates were or had been members of the Confederation Congress, and many had been members of the Continental Congress during the Revolution.[21]:25 Several had been state governors.[6]:65[36] Just two delegates, Roger Sherman and Robert Morris, would be signatories to all three of the nation's founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution.[36]

text: More than half of the delegates had trained as lawyers (several had even been judges), although only about a quarter had practiced law as their principal means of business. There were also merchants, manufacturers, shippers, land speculators, bankers or financiers, two or three physicians, a minister, and several small farmers.[6]:65–68[36] Of the 25 who owned slaves, 16 depended on slave labor to run the plantations or other businesses that formed the mainstay of their income. Most of the delegates were landowners with substantial holdings, and most, with the possible exception of Roger Sherman and William Few, were very comfortably wealthy.[6]:66–67 George Washington and Robert Morris were among the wealthiest men in the entire country.[36]

text:
Connecticut

Oliver Ellsworth*
William Samuel Johnson
Roger Sherman

text:
Delaware

Richard Bassett
Gunning Bedford, Jr.
Jacob Broom
John Dickinson
George Read

text:
Georgia

Abraham Baldwin
William Few
William Houstoun*
William Pierce*

text:
Maryland

Daniel Carroll
Luther Martin*
James McHenry
John Francis Mercer*
Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer

text:
Massachusetts

Elbridge Gerry*
Nathaniel Gorham
Rufus King
Caleb Strong*

text:
New Hampshire

Nicholas Gilman
John Langdon

text:
New Jersey

David Brearley
Jonathan Dayton
William Houston*
William Livingston
William Paterson

text:
New York

Alexander Hamilton
John Lansing, Jr.*
Robert Yates*

text:
North Carolina

William Blount
William Richardson Davie*
Alexander Martin*
Richard Dobbs Spaight
Hugh Williamson

text:
Pennsylvania

George Clymer
Thomas Fitzsimons
Benjamin Franklin
Jared Ingersoll
Thomas Mifflin
Gouverneur Morris
Robert Morris
James Wilson

text:
South Carolina

Pierce Butler
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney
Charles Pinckney
John Rutledge

text:
Virginia

John Blair
James Madison
George Mason*
James McClurg*
Edmund Randolph*
George Washington
George Wythe*

text:
Rhode Island
Rhode Island did not send delegates to the Convention.

text: (*) Did not sign the final draft of the U.S. Constitution. Randolph, Mason, and Gerry were the only three present in Philadelphia at the time who refused to sign.

text: Several prominent Founders are notable for not participating in the Constitutional Convention. Thomas Jefferson was abroad, serving as the minister to France (nonetheless, Jefferson, in a letter to John Adams, would describe the delegates approvingly as a gathering of "demi-gods").[37]:13 John Adams was in Britain, serving as minister to that country, but he wrote home to encourage the delegates. Patrick Henry refused to participate because he "smelt a rat in Philadelphia, tending toward the monarchy." Also absent were John Hancock and Samuel Adams. Many of the states' older and more experienced leaders may have simply been too busy with the local affairs of their states to attend the Convention,[6]:65 which had originally been planned to strengthen the existing Articles of Confederation, not to write a constitution for a completely new national government.


document_title: Union (American Civil War)

question_text: were the yankees from the north or south

question_tokens: were the yankees from the north or south

root

text: Union (American Civil War)

text: Etymology[edit]

text: In the context of the American Civil War, the Union is sometimes referred to as "the North", both then and now, as opposed to the Confederacy, which was "the South". The Union never recognized the legitimacy of the Confederacy's secession and maintained at all times that it remained entirely a part of the United States of America. In foreign affairs the Union was the only side recognized by all other nations, none of which officially recognized the Confederate government. The term "Union" occurs in the first governing document of the United States, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. The subsequent Constitution of 1787 was issued and ratified in the name not of the states, but of "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union ...". Union, for the United States of America, is then repeated in such clauses as the Admission to the Union clause in Article IV, Section 3.

tag: p

text: Even before the war started, the phrase "preserve the Union" was commonplace, and a "union of states" had been used to refer to the entire United States of America. Using the term "Union" to apply to the non-secessionist side carried a connotation of legitimacy as the continuation of the pre-existing political entity.[1]

text: Confederates generally saw the Union states as being opposed to slavery, occasionally referring to them as abolitionists, as in reference to the U.S. Navy as the "Abolition fleet" and the U.S. Army as the "Abolition forces".[2]

text: Size and strength[edit]

text: Unlike the Confederacy, the Union had a large industrialized and urbanized area (the Northeast), and more advanced commercial, transportation and financial systems than the rural South.[3] Additionally, the Union states had a manpower advantage of 5 to 2 at the start of the war.[4]

text: Year by year, the Confederacy shrank and lost control of increasing quantities of resources and population. Meanwhile, the Union turned its growing potential advantage into a much stronger military force. However, much of the Union strength had to be used to garrison conquered areas, and to protect railroads and other vital points. The Union's great advantages in population and industry would prove to be vital long-term factors in its victory over the Confederacy, but it took the Union a long while to fully mobilize these resources.

text:
Union states
in the
American Civil War

California
Connecticut
Delaware
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New York
Ohio
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
Vermont
West Virginia
Wisconsin

Dual governments

Kentucky
Missouri

Territories and D.C.

Arizona
Colorado
Dakota
District of Columbia
Idaho
Indian Territory
Montana
Nebraska
New Mexico
Utah
Washington

v
t
e

tag: table

text: Public opinion[edit]

text: The attack on Fort Sumter rallied the North to the defense of American nationalism. Historian, Allan Nevins, says:

text: The thunderclap of Sumter produced a startling crystallization of Northern sentiment ... Anger swept the land. From every side came news of mass meetings, speeches, resolutions, tenders of business support, the muster of companies and regiments, the determined action of governors and legislatures.[5]

text: McClintock states:

text: At the time, Northerners were right to wonder at the near unanimity that so quickly followed long months of bitterness and discord. It would not last throughout the protracted war to come – or even through the year – but in that moment of unity was laid bare the common Northern nationalism usually hidden by the fierce battles more typical of the political arena."[6]

text: Historian Michael Smith, argues that, as the war ground on year after year, the spirit of American republicanism grew stronger and generated fears of corruption in high places. Voters became afraid of power being centralized in Washington, extravagant spending, and war profiteering. Democratic candidates emphasized these fears. The candidates added that rapid modernization was putting too much political power in the hands of Eastern financiers and industrialists. They warned that the abolition of slavery would bring a flood of freed blacks into the labor market of the North.

text: Republicans responded with claims of defeatism. They indicted Copperheads for criminal conspiracies to free Confederate prisoners of war, and played on the spirit of nationalism and the growing hatred of the slaveowners, as the guilty party in the war.[7]

text: President Lincoln[edit]

text: Historians have overwhelmingly praised the "political genius" of Abraham Lincoln's performance as President.[8] His first priority was military victory. This required that he master entirely new skills as a strategist and diplomat. He oversaw supplies, finances, manpower, the selection of generals, and the course of overall strategy. Working closely with state and local politicians, he rallied public opinion and (at Gettysburg) articulated a national mission that has defined America ever since. Lincoln's charm and willingness to cooperate with political and personal enemies made Washington work much more smoothly than Richmond, the Confederate capital, and his wit smoothed many rough edges. Lincoln's cabinet proved much stronger and more efficient than Davis's, as Lincoln channeled personal rivalries into a competition for excellence rather than mutual destruction. With William Seward at State, Salmon P. Chase at the Treasury, and (from 1862) Edwin Stanton at the War Department, Lincoln had a powerful cabinet of determined men. Except for monitoring major appointments and decisions, Lincoln gave them free rein to end the Confederate rebellion.[9]

text: Congress[edit]

text: The Republican Congress passed many major laws that reshaped the nation's economy, financial system, tax system, land system, and higher education system. These included: the Morrill tariff, the Homestead Act, the Pacific Railroad Act, and the National Banking Act.[10] Lincoln paid relatively little attention to this legislation as he focused on war issues but he worked smoothly with powerful Congressional leaders such as Thaddeus Stevens (on taxation and spending), Charles Sumner (on foreign affairs), Lyman Trumbull (on legal issues), Justin Smith Morrill (on land grants and tariffs) and William Pitt Fessenden (on finances).[11]

text: Military and reconstruction issues were another matter. Lincoln, as the leader of the moderate and conservative factions of the Republican Party, often crossed swords with the Radical Republicans, led by Stevens and Sumner. Author, Bruce Tap, shows that Congress challenged Lincoln's role as commander-in-chief through the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. It was a joint committee of both houses that was dominated by the Radical Republicans, who took a hard line against the Confederacy. During the 37th and 38th Congresses, the committee investigated every aspect of Union military operations, with special attention to finding commanders culpable for military defeats. It assumed an inevitable Union victory. Failure was perceived to indicate evil motivations or personal failures. The committee distrusted graduates of the US Military Academy at West Point, since many of the academy's alumni were leaders of the enemy army. Members of the committee much preferred political generals with a satisfactory political record. Some of the committee suggested that West-Pointers who engaged in strategic maneuver were cowardly or even disloyal. It ended up endorsing incompetent but politically correct generals.[12]

text: Opposition[edit]

text: The opposition came from Copperhead Democrats, who were strongest in the Midwest and wanted to allow Confederate secession. In the East, opposition to the war was strongest among Irish Catholics, but also included business interests connected to the South typified by August Belmont. The Democratic Party was deeply split. In 1861 most Democrats supported the war. However, the party increasingly split down the middle between the moderates who supported the war effort, and the peace element, including Copperheads, who did not. It scored major gains in the 1862 elections, and elected the moderate Horatio Seymour as governor of New York. They gained 28 seats in the House of Representatives but Republicans retained control of both the House and the Senate.

text: The 1862 election for the Indiana legislature was especially hard-fought. Though the Democrats gained control of the legislature, they were unable to impede the war effort. Republican Governor Oliver P. Morton was able to maintain control of the state's contribution to the war effort despite the Democrat majority.[13] Washington was especially helpful in 1864 in arranging furloughs to allow Hoosier soldiers to return home so they could vote in elections.[14] Across the North in 1864, the great majority of soldiers voted Republican. Men who had been Democrats before the war often abstained or voted Republican.[15]

text: As the federal draft laws tightened, there was serious unrest among Copperhead strongholds, such as the Irish in the Pennsylvania coal mining districts. The government needed the coal more than the draftees, so it ignored the largely non-violent draft dodging there.[16][17] The violent New York City draft riots of 1863 were suppressed by the U.S. Army firing grape shot down cobblestone city streets.[18][19]

text: The Democrats nominated George McClellan, a War Democrat for the 1864 presidential election but gave him an anti-war platform. In terms of Congress the opposition against the war was nearly powerless – as was the case in most states. In Indiana and Illinois pro-war governors circumvented anti-war legislatures elected in 1862. For 30 years after the war the Democrats carried the burden of having opposed the martyred Lincoln, who was viewed by many as the salvation of the Union and the destroyer of slavery.[20]

text: Copperheads[edit]

text: The Copperheads were a large faction of northern Democrats who opposed the war, demanding an immediate peace settlement. They said they wanted to restore "the Union as it was" (that is, with the South and with slavery) but they realized that the Confederacy would never voluntarily rejoin the U.S.[21] The most prominent Copperhead was Ohio's Clement L. Vallandigham, a Congressman and leader of the Democratic Party in Ohio. He was defeated in an intense election for governor in 1863. Republican prosecutors in the Midwest accused some Copperhead activists of treason in a series of trials in 1864.[22]

text: Copperheadism was a grassroots movement, strongest in the area just north of the Ohio River, as well as some urban ethnic wards. Some historians have argued that it represented a traditionalistic element alarmed at the rapid modernization of society sponsored by the Republican Party. It looked back to Jacksonian Democracy for inspiration – with ideals that promoted an agrarian rather than industrialized concept of society. Weber (2006) argues that the Copperheads damaged the Union war effort by fighting the draft, encouraging desertion and forming conspiracies.[23] However, other historians say the Copperheads were a legitimate opposition force unfairly treated by the government, adding that the draft was in disrepute and that the Republicans greatly exaggerated the conspiracies for partisan reasons.[24] Copperheadism was a major issue in the 1864 presidential election – its strength waxed when Union armies were doing poorly and waned when they won great victories. After the fall of Atlanta in September 1864, military success seemed assured and Copperheadism collapsed.[21]

text: Soldiers[edit]

text: Recruiting volunteers[edit]

text: Enthusiastic young men clamored to join the Union army in 1861. They came with family support for reasons of patriotism and excitement. Washington decided to keep the small regular army intact; it only had 16,000 men and was needed to guard the frontier. Its officers could, however, join the temporary new volunteer army that was formed, with expectations that their experience would lead to rapid promotions. The problem with volunteering, however, was its serious lack of planning, leadership, and organization at the highest levels. Washington called on the states for troops, and every northern governor set about raising and equipping regiments, and sent the bills to the War Department. The men could elect the junior officers, while the governor appointed the senior officers, and Lincoln appointed the generals. Typically, politicians used their local organizations to raise troops and were in line (if healthy enough) to become colonel. The problem was that the War Department, under the disorganized leadership of Simon Cameron, also authorized local and private groups to raise regiments. The result was widespread confusion and delay.

text: Pennsylvania, for example, had acute problems. When Washington called for 10 more regiments, enough men volunteered to form 30. However, they were scattered among 70 different new units, none of them a complete regiment. Not until Washington approved gubernatorial control of all new units was the problem resolved. Allan Nevins is particularly scathing of this in his analysis: "A President more exact, systematic and vigilant than Lincoln, a Secretary more alert and clearheaded than Cameron, would have prevented these difficulties."[25]

text: By the end of 1861, 700,000 soldiers were drilling in Union camps. The first wave in spring was called up for only 90 days, then the soldiers went home or reenlisted. Later waves enlisted for three years.

text: The new recruits spent their time drilling in company and regiment formations. The combat in the first year, though strategically important, involved relatively small forces and few casualties. Sickness was a much more serious cause of hospitalization or death.

text: In the first few months, men wore low quality uniforms made of "shoddy" material, but by fall, sturdy wool uniforms—in blue—were standard. The nation's factories were converted to produce the rifles, cannons, wagons, tents, telegraph sets, and the myriad of other special items the army needed.

text: While business had been slow or depressed in spring 1861, because of war fears and Southern boycotts, by fall business was hiring again, offering young men jobs that were an alternative way to help win the war. Nonpartisanship was the rule in the first year, but by summer 1862, many Democrats had stopped supporting the war effort, and volunteering fell off sharply in their strongholds.

text: The calls for more and more soldiers continued, so states and localities responded by offering cash bonuses. By 1863, a draft law was in effect, but few men actually were drafted and served, since the law was designed to get them to volunteer or hire a substitute. Others hid away or left the country. With the Emancipation Proclamation taking effect in January 1863, localities could meet their draft quota by sponsoring regiments of ex-slaves organized in the South.[26]

text: Michigan was especially eager to send thousands of volunteers.[27] A study of the cities of Grand Rapids and Niles shows an overwhelming surge of nationalism in 1861, whipping up enthusiasm for the war in all segments of society, and all political, religious, ethnic, and occupational groups. However, by 1862 the casualties were mounting, and the war was increasingly focused on freeing the slaves in addition to preserving the Union. Copperhead Democrats called the war a failure, and it became an increasingly partisan Republican effort.[28] Michigan voters remained evenly split between the parties in the presidential election of 1864.[29]

text: Motivations of soldiers[edit]

text: Perman (2010) says historians are of two minds on why millions of men seemed so eager to fight, suffer, and die over four years:

text: Some historians emphasize that Civil War soldiers were driven by political ideology, holding firm beliefs about the importance of liberty, Union, or state rights, or about the need to protect or to destroy slavery. Others point to less overtly political reasons to fight, such as the defense of one's home and family, or the honor and brotherhood to be preserved when fighting alongside other men. Most historians agree that, no matter what he thought about when he went into the war, the experience of combat affected him profoundly and sometimes affected his reasons for continuing to fight.[30]

text: The paperwork war[edit]

text: On the whole, the national, state, and local governments handled the avalanche of paperwork effectively. Skills developed in insurance and financial companies formed the basis of systematic forms, copies, summaries, and filing systems used to make sense of masses of human data. The leader in this effort, John Shaw Billings, later developed a system of mechanically storing, sorting, and counting numerical information using punch cards. Nevertheless, old-fashioned methodology had to be recognized and overcome. An illustrative case study came in New Hampshire, where the critical post of state adjutant general was held in 1861–64 by elderly politician Anthony C. Colby (1792–1873) and his son Daniel E. Colby (1816–1891). They were patriotic, but were overwhelmed with the complexity of their duties. The state lost track of men who enlisted after 1861; it had no personnel records or information on volunteers, substitutes, or draftees, and there was no inventory of weaponry and supplies. Nathaniel Head (1828–1883) took over in 1864, obtained an adequate budget and office staff, and reconstructed the missing paperwork. As result, widows, orphans, and disabled veterans received the postwar payments they had earned.[31]

text: Medical conditions[edit]

text: More soldiers died of disease than from battle injuries, and even larger numbers were temporarily incapacitated by wounds, disease, and accidents. The Union responded by building army hospitals in every state.

text: The hygiene of the camps was poor, especially at the beginning of the war when men who had seldom been far from home were brought together for training with thousands of strangers. First came epidemics of the childhood diseases of chicken pox, mumps, whooping cough, and especially, measles. Operations in the South meant a dangerous and new disease environment, bringing diarrhea, dysentery, typhoid fever, and malaria. There were no antibiotics, so the surgeons prescribed coffee, whiskey, and quinine. Harsh weather, bad water, inadequate shelter in winter quarters, poor policing of camps, and dirty camp hospitals took their toll.[32] This was a common scenario in wars from time immemorial, and conditions faced by the Confederate army were even worse. What was different in the Union was the emergence of skilled, well-funded medical organizers who took proactive action, especially in the much enlarged United States Army Medical Department,[33] and the United States Sanitary Commission, a new private agency.[34] Numerous other new agencies also targeted the medical and morale needs of soldiers, including the United States Christian Commission, as well as smaller private agencies, such as the Women's Central Association of Relief for Sick and Wounded in the Army (WCAR), founded in 1861 by Henry Whitney Bellows, a Unitarian minister, and the social reformer Dorothea Dix. Systematic funding appeals raised public consciousness as well as millions of dollars. Many thousands of volunteers worked in the hospitals and rest homes, most famously poet Walt Whitman. Frederick Law Olmsted, a famous landscape architect, was the highly efficient executive director of the Sanitary Commission.[35]

text: States could use their own tax money to support their troops, as Ohio did. Under the energetic leadership of Governor David Tod, a War Democrat who won office on a coalition "Union Party" ticket with Republicans, Ohio acted vigorously. Following the unexpected carnage at the battle of Shiloh in April 1862, Ohio sent three steamboats to the scene as floating hospitals equipped with doctors, nurses, and medical supplies. The state fleet expanded to 11 hospital ships, and the state set up 12 local offices in main transportation nodes, to help Ohio soldiers moving back and forth.[36]

text: The Christian Commission comprised 6,000 volunteers who aided chaplains in many ways.[37] For example, its agents distributed Bibles, delivered sermons, helped with sending letters home, taught men to read and write, and set up camp libraries.[38]

text: The Army learned many lessons and modernized its procedures,[39] and medical science—especially surgery—made many advances.[40] In the long run, the wartime experiences of the numerous Union commissions modernized public welfare, and set the stage for large—scale community philanthropy in America based on fund raising campaigns and private donations.[41]

text: Additionally, women gained new public roles. For example, Mary Livermore (1820–1905), the manager of the Chicago branch of the US Sanitary Commission, used her newfound organizational skills to mobilize support for women's suffrage after the war. She argued that women needed more education and job opportunities to help them fulfill their role of serving others.[42]

text: The Sanitary Commission collected enormous amounts of statistical data, and opened up the problems of storing information for fast access and mechanically searching for data patterns.[43] The pioneer was John Shaw Billings (1838–1913). A senior surgeon in the war, Billings built two of the world's most important libraries, Library of the Surgeon General's Office (now the National Library of Medicine) and the New York Public Library; he also figured out how to mechanically analyze data by turning it into numbers and punching onto the computer punch card as developed by his student Herman Hollerith. Hollerith's company became International Business Machines (IBM) in 1911.[44]

text: Prisoners of war[edit]

text: Both sides operated prison camps; they handled about 400,000 captives, but many other prisoners were quickly released and never sent to camps. The Record and Pension Office in 1901 counted 211,000 Northerners who were captured. In 1861–63 most were immediately paroled; after the parole exchange system broke down in 1863, about 195,000 went to Confederate prison camps. Some tried to escape but few succeeded. By contrast 464,000 Confederates were captured (many in the final days) and 215,000 imprisoned. Over 30,000 Union and nearly 26,000 Confederate prisoners died in captivity. Just over 12% of the captives in Northern prisons died, compared to 15.5% for Southern prisons.[45][46]

text: Draft riots[edit]

text: Discontent with the 1863 draft law led to riots in several cities and in rural areas as well. By far the most important were the New York City draft riots of July 13 to July 16, 1863.[47] Irish Catholic and other workers fought police, militia and regular army units until the Army used artillery to sweep the streets. Initially focused on the draft, the protests quickly expanded into violent attacks on blacks in New York City, with many killed on the streets.[48]

text: Small-scale riots broke out in ethnic German and Irish districts, and in areas along the Ohio River with many Copperheads. Holmes County, Ohio was an isolated parochial area dominated by Pennsylvania Dutch and some recent German immigrants. It was a Democratic stronghold and few men dared speak out in favor of conscription. Local politicians denounced Lincoln and Congress as despotic, seeing the draft law as a violation of their local autonomy. In June 1863, small-scale disturbances broke out; they ended when the Army sent in armed units.[49][50][51]

text: Economy[edit]

text: The Union economy grew and prospered during the war while fielding a very large army and navy.[52] The Republicans in Washington had a Whiggish vision of an industrial nation, with great cities, efficient factories, productive farms, all national banks, all knit together by a modern railroad system, to be mobilized by the United States Military Railroad. The South had resisted policies such as tariffs to promote industry and homestead laws to promote farming because slavery would not benefit. With the South gone and Northern Democrats weak, the Republicans enacted their legislation. At the same time they passed new taxes to pay for part of the war and issued large amounts of bonds to pay for most of the rest. Economic historians attribute the remainder of the cost of the war to inflation. Congress wrote an elaborate program of economic modernization that had the dual purpose of winning the war and permanently transforming the economy.[53] For a list of the major industrialists see .

text: Financing the war[edit]

text: In 1860 the Treasury was a small operation that funded the small-scale operations of the government through land sales and customs based on a low tariff.[54] Peacetime revenues were trivial in comparison with the cost of a full-scale war but the Treasury Department under Secretary Salmon P. Chase showed unusual ingenuity in financing the war without crippling the economy.[55] Many new taxes were imposed and always with a patriotic theme comparing the financial sacrifice to the sacrifices of life and limb. The government paid for supplies in real money, which encouraged people to sell to the government regardless of their politics. By contrast the Confederacy gave paper promissory notes when it seized property, so that even loyal Confederates would hide their horses and mules rather than sell them for dubious paper. Overall the Northern financial system was highly successful in raising money and turning patriotism into profit, while the Confederate system impoverished its patriots.[56]

text: The United States needed $3.1 billion to pay for the immense armies and fleets raised to fight the Civil War—over $400 million just in 1862 alone.[57] Apart from tariffs, the largest revenue by far came from new excise taxes—a sort of value added tax—that was imposed on every sort of manufactured item. Second came much higher tariffs, through several Morrill tariff laws. Third came the nation's first income tax; only the wealthy paid and it was repealed at war's end.

text: Apart from taxes, the second major source of income was government bonds. For the first time bonds in small denominations were sold directly to the people, with publicity and patriotism as key factors, as designed by banker Jay Cooke. State banks lost their power to issue banknotes. Only national banks could do that and Chase made it easy to become a national bank; it involved buying and holding federal bonds and financiers rushed to open these banks. Chase numbered them, so that the first one in each city was the "First National Bank".[58] Third, the government printed paper money called "greenbacks". They led to endless controversy because they caused inflation.[59]

text: The North's most important war measure was perhaps the creation of a system of national banks that provided a sound currency for the industrial expansion. Even more important, the hundreds of new banks that were allowed to open were required to purchase government bonds. Thereby the nation monetized the potential wealth represented by farms, urban buildings, factories, and businesses, and immediately turned that money over to the Treasury for war needs.[60]

text: Tariffs[edit]

text: Secretary Chase, though a long-time free-trader, worked with Morrill to pass a second tariff bill in summer 1861, raising rates another 10 points in order to generate more revenues.[61] These subsequent bills were primarily revenue driven to meet the war's needs, though they enjoyed the support of protectionists such as Carey, who again assisted Morrill in the bill's drafting. The Morrill Tariff of 1861 was designed to raise revenue. The tariff act of 1862 served not only to raise revenue but also to encourage the establishment of factories free from British competition by taxing British imports. Furthermore, it protected American factory workers from low paid European workers, and as a major bonus attracted tens of thousands of those Europeans to immigrate to America for high wage factory and craftsman jobs.[62]

text: Customs revenue from tariffs totaled $345 million from 1861 through 1865 or 43% of all federal tax revenue.

text: Land grants[edit]

text: The U.S. government owned vast amounts of good land (mostly from the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the Oregon Treaty with Britain in 1846). The challenge was to make the land useful to people and to provide the economic basis for the wealth that would pay off the war debt. Land grants went to railroad construction companies to open up the western plains and link up to California. Together with the free lands provided farmers by the Homestead Law the low-cost farm lands provided by the land grants sped up the expansion of commercial agriculture in the West.

text: The 1862 Homestead Act opened up the public domain lands for free. Land grants to the railroads meant they could sell tracts for family farms (80 to 200 acres) at low prices with extended credit. In addition the government sponsored fresh information, scientific methods and the latest techniques through the newly established Department of Agriculture and the Morrill Land Grant College Act.[63][64]

text: Agriculture[edit]

text: Agriculture was the largest single industry and it prospered during the war.[65][66] Prices were high, pulled up by a strong demand from the army and from Britain (which depended on American wheat for a fourth of its food imports). The war acted as a catalyst that encouraged the rapid adoption of horse-drawn machinery and other implements. The rapid spread of recent inventions such as the reaper and mower made the work force efficient, even as hundreds of thousands of farmers were in the army. Many wives took their place and often consulted by mail on what to do; increasingly they relied on community and extended kin for advice and help.[67]

text: The Union used hundreds of thousands of animals. The Army had plenty of cash to purchase them from farmers and breeders but especially in the early months the quality was mixed.[68] Horses were needed for cavalry and artillery.[69] Mules pulled the wagons. The supply held up, despite an unprecedented epidemic of glanders, a fatal disease that baffled veterinarians.[70] In the South, the Union army shot all the horses it did not need to keep them out of Confederate hands.

text: Cotton trade[edit]

text: The Treasury started buying cotton during the war, for shipment to Europe and northern mills. The sellers were Southern planters who needed the cash, regardless of their patriotism. The Northern buyers could make heavy profits, which annoyed soldiers like Ulysses Grant. He blamed Jewish traders and expelled them from his lines in 1862 but Lincoln quickly overruled this show of anti-semitism. Critics said the cotton trade helped the South, prolonged the war and fostered corruption. Lincoln decided to continue the trade for fear that Britain might intervene if its textile manufacturers were denied raw material. Another goal was to foster latent Unionism in Southern border states. Northern textile manufacturers needed cotton to remain in business and to make uniforms, while cotton exports to Europe provided an important source of gold to finance the war.[71]

text: Industrial and business leaders and military inventors[edit]

text:
Matthias W. Baldwin
Benjamin Bates IV
John Jacob Bausch
Andrew Carnegie
Gardner Colby
Samuel Colt
Jay Cooke
George Henry Corliss
William Wesley Cornell
Erastus Corning
John Crerar (industrialist)
Charles I. du Pont
James Buchanan Eads
John Ericsson
William P. Halliday
Benjamin Tyler Henry
Gouverneur Kemble
Benjamin Knight
Robert Knight (industrialist)
Benedict Lapham
David Leavitt (banker)
John Lenthall (shipbuilder)
Henry Lomb
William Mason (locomotive builder)
William Metcalf (manufacturer)
Samuel Morse
Asa Packer
Robert Parker Parrott
Daniel Pratt (industrialist)
George Pullman
Christian Sharps
David Sinton
Horace Smith (inventor)
Christopher Miner Spencer
George Luther Stearns
Henry J. Steere
Ezekiel A. Straw
John Edgar Thomson
Cornelius Vanderbilt
Ezra Warner (inventor)
Daniel B. Wesson
Rollin White
Amos Whitney
Oliver Winchester
John F. Winslow
George Worthington (businessman)

tag: ul

text: Society[edit]

text: Religion[edit]

text: The Protestant religion was quite strong in the North in the 1860s. The United States Christian Commission sent agents into the Army camps to provide psychological support as well as books, newspapers, food and clothing. Through prayer, sermons and welfare operations, the agents ministered to soldiers' spiritual as well as temporal needs as they sought to bring the men to a Christian way of life.[72] Most churches made an effort to support their soldiers in the field and especially their families back home. Much of the political rhetoric of the era had a distinct religious tone.[73]

text: The Protestant clergy in America took a variety of positions. In general, the pietistic denominations such as the Methodists, Northern Baptists and Congregationalists strongly supported the war effort. Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans and conservative Presbyterians generally avoided any discussion of the war, so it would not bitterly divide their membership. The Quakers, while giving strong support to the abolitionist movement on a personal level, refused to take a denominational position. Some clergymen who supported the Confederacy were denounced as Copperheads, especially in the border regions.[74][75]

text: Methodists[edit]

text: Many Northerners had only recently become religious (following the Second Great Awakening) and religion was a powerful force in their lives. No denomination was more active in supporting the Union than the Methodist Episcopal Church. Carwardine[76] argues that for many Methodists, the victory of Lincoln in 1860 heralded the arrival of the kingdom of God in America. They were moved into action by a vision of freedom for slaves, freedom from the persecutions of godly abolitionists, release from the Slave Power's evil grip on the American government and the promise of a new direction for the Union.[76] Methodists formed a major element of the popular support for the Radical Republicans with their hard line toward the white South. Dissident Methodists left the church.[77] During Reconstruction the Methodists took the lead in helping form Methodist churches for Freedmen and moving into Southern cities even to the point of taking control, with Army help, of buildings that had belonged to the southern branch of the church.[78][79]

text: The Methodist family magazine Ladies' Repository promoted Christian family activism. Its articles provided moral uplift to women and children. It portrayed the War as a great moral crusade against a decadent Southern civilization corrupted by slavery. It recommended activities that family members could perform in order to aid the Union cause.[80]

text: Family[edit]

text: Historian Stephen M. Frank reports that what it meant to be a father varied with status and age. He says most men demonstrated dual commitments as providers and nurturers and believed that husband and wife had mutual obligations toward their children. The war privileged masculinity, dramatizing and exaggerating, father-son bonds. Especially at five critical stages in the soldier's career (enlistment, blooding, mustering out, wounding and death) letters from absent fathers articulated a distinctive set of 19th-century ideals of manliness.[81]

text: Children[edit]

text: There were numerous children's magazines such as Merry's Museum, The Student and Schoolmate, Our Young Folks, The Little Pilgrim, Forrester's Playmate, and The Little Corporal. They showed a Protestant religious tone and "promoted the principles of hard work, obedience, generosity, humility, and piety; trumpeted the benefits of family cohesion; and furnished mild adventure stories, innocent entertainment, and instruction".[82] Their pages featured factual information and anecdotes about the war along with related quizzes, games, poems, songs, short oratorical pieces for "declamation", short stories and very short plays that children could stage. They promoted patriotism and the Union war aims, fostered kindly attitudes toward freed slaves, blackened the Confederates cause, encouraged readers to raise money for war-related humanitarian funds, and dealt with the death of family members.[83] By 1866, the Milton Bradley Company was selling "The Myriopticon: A Historical Panorama of the Rebellion" that allowed children to stage a neighborhood show that would explain the war. It comprised colorful drawings that were turned on wheels and included pre-printed tickets, poster advertisements, and narration that could be read aloud at the show.[84]

text: Caring for war orphans was an important function for local organizations as well as state and local government.[85] A typical state was Iowa, where the private "Iowa Soldiers Orphans Home Association" operated with funding from the legislature and public donations. It set up orphanages in Davenport, Glenwood and Cedar Falls. The state government funded pensions for the widows and children of soldiers.[86] Orphan schools like the Pennsylvania Soldiers' Orphan School, also spoke of the broader public welfare experiment that began as part of the aftermath of the Civil War. These orphan schools were created to provide housing, care, and education for orphans of Civil War soldiers. They became a matter of state pride, with orphans were paraded around at rallies to display the power of a patriotic schooling.[87]

text: All the northern states had free public school systems before the war but not the border states. West Virginia set up its system in 1863. Over bitter opposition it established an almost-equal education for black children, most of whom were ex-slaves.[88] Thousands of black refugees poured into St. Louis, where the Freedmen's Relief Society, the Ladies Union Aid Society, the Western Sanitary Commission, and the American Missionary Association (AMA) set up schools for their children.[89]

text: Unionists in South and Border states[edit]

text: People loyal to the U.S. federal government and opposed to secession living in the border states (where slavery was legal in 1861) were termed Unionists. Confederates sometimes styled them "Homemade Yankees". However, Southern Unionists were not necessarily northern sympathizers and many of them, although opposing secession, supported the Confederacy once it was a fact. East Tennessee never supported the Confederacy, and Unionists there became powerful state leaders, including governors Andrew Johnson and William G. Brownlow. Likewise, large pockets of eastern Kentucky were Unionist and helped keep the state from seceding.[90] Western Virginia, with few slaves and some industry, was so strongly Unionist that it broke away and formed the new state of West Virginia.[91]

text: Still, nearly 120,000 Unionists from the South served in the Union Army during the Civil War and Unionist regiments were raised from every Confederate state except South Carolina. Among such units was the 1st Alabama Cavalry Regiment, which served as William Sherman's personal escort on his march to the sea. Southern Unionists were extensively used as anti-guerrilla paramilitary forces.[92] During Reconstruction many of these Unionists became "Scalawags", a derogatory term for Southern supporters of the Republican Party.[93]

text: Guerrilla warfare[edit]

text: Besides organized military conflict, the border states were beset by guerrilla warfare. In such a bitterly divided state, neighbors frequently used the excuse of war to settle personal grudges and took up arms against neighbors.

text: Missouri[edit]

text: Missouri was the scene of over 1000 engagements between Union and Confederate forces, and uncounted numbers of guerrilla attacks and raids by informal pro-Confederate bands.[94] Western Missouri was the scene of brutal guerrilla warfare during the Civil War. Roving insurgent bands such as Quantrill's Raiders and the men of Bloody Bill Anderson terrorized the countryside, striking both military installations and civilian settlements. Because of the widespread attacks and the protection offered by Confederate sympathizers, Federal leaders issued General Order No. 11 in 1863, and evacuated areas of Jackson, Cass, and Bates counties. They forced the residents out to reduce support for the guerrillas. Union cavalry could sweep through and track down Confederate guerrillas, who no longer had places to hide and people and infrastructure to support them. On short notice, the army forced almost 20,000 people, mostly women, children and the elderly, to leave their homes. Many never returned and the affected counties were economically devastated for years after the end of the war.[95] Families passed along stories of their bitter experiences down through several generations – Harry Truman's grandparents were caught up in the raids and he would tell of how they were kept in concentration camps.[96]

text: Some marauding units became organized criminal gangs after the war. In 1882, the bank robber and ex-Confederate guerrilla Jesse James was killed in Saint Joseph. Vigilante groups appeared in remote areas where law enforcement was weak, to deal with the lawlessness left over from the guerrilla warfare phase. For example, the Bald Knobbers were the term for several law-and-order vigilante groups in the Ozarks. In some cases, they too turned to illegal gang activity.[97]

text: Kentucky[edit]

text: In response to the growing problem of locally organized guerrilla campaigns throughout 1863 and 1864, in June 1864, Maj. Gen. Stephen G. Burbridge was given command over the state of Kentucky. This began an extended period of military control that would last through early 1865, beginning with martial law authorized by President Abraham Lincoln. To pacify Kentucky, Burbridge rigorously suppressed disloyalty and used economic pressure as coercion. His guerrilla policy, which included public execution of four guerrillas for the death of each unarmed Union citizen, caused the most controversy. After a falling out with Governor Thomas E. Bramlette, Burbridge was dismissed in February 1865. Confederates remembered him as the "Butcher of Kentucky".[98]

text: Union states[edit]

text: Washington, D.C

text: List of Wikipedia articles on Union states and major cities:

text:
California
Connecticut
Delaware*
Illinois
Indiana

Indianapolis

Iowa
Kansas

Kentucky†*

Lexington
Louisville

Maine
Maryland*

Baltimore

Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri†*

St. Louis

Nevada
New Hampshire

New Jersey
New York

New York City

Ohio

Cincinnati
Cleveland

Oregon

Pennsylvania

Harrisburg
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh

Rhode Island
Vermont
Virginia†*
West Virginia*
Wisconsin

text: * Border states with slavery in 1861

text: †Had two state governments, one Unionist one Confederate, both claiming to be the legitimate government of their state. Kentucky and Missouri's Confederate governments never had significant control of their state.

text: West Virginia separated from Virginia and became part of the Union during the war, on June 20, 1863. Nevada also joined the Union during the war, becoming a state on October 31, 1864.

text: Union Territories[edit]

text: The Union controlled territories in April 1861 were:[99]

text:
Colorado Territory
Dakota Territory
Indian Territory (disputed with the Confederacy)
Nebraska Territory
Nevada Territory (became a state in 1864)
New Mexico Territory

Arizona Territory (split off in 1863)

Utah Territory
Washington Territory

Idaho Territory (split off in 1863)

Montana Territory (split off in 1864)

text: The Indian Territory saw its own civil war, as the major tribes held slaves and endorsed the Confederacy.[100]