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Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution
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Index of Terms
13th Amendment
The 13th Amendment, passed under Lincoln in 1865, abolished slavery in the United States. After issuing the Emancipation Proclamation on New Year’s Day 1863, Lincoln “threw his weight behind the Thirteenth Amendment” (34) to push it through Senate and the House. Perhaps the single most important amendment for social revolution in America, it also helped secure Union victory in the Civil War.
14th Amendment
The 14th Amendment, passed in 1868 after Lincoln’s time in office, granted citizenship to all persons born in the United States, including former slaves. Passed by Congress as “a compromise that granted blacks equal civil rights but not equal voting rights” (5), it also “restrain[ed] the power of the States and compel[led] them at all times to respect these great fundamental guarantees” (141) of liberty for freed slaves, or else face prosecution. As such, this amendment was a necessary constituent of full emancipation.
15th Amendment
The 15th Amendment, passed in 1869, secured voting rights for black Americans, thereby ensuring “the fundamental rights and liberties upon which the whole fabric of free government rests” (150). Suffrage, as Frederick Douglass wrote, is “the keystone of the arch of human liberty” (139), and the passage of the 15th Amendment effectively completed the promise of emancipation, securing the rights of freed slaves and all black Americans to participate in their representational democracy.
Republican
The party Lincoln belonged to, which believed in the preservation of the Republic of the United States as a singular Union, as established in the Revolution of 1776. The Republican Party was founded in 1854 when antislavery Democrats joined with the Whig party. Lincoln was the first Republican president, winning the Republican nomination over William Seward and the election against Democrat Stephen Douglas.
Democrat
The Democratic Party of the United States was founded in 1828. The party split in 1854, and antislavery Democrats joined with members of the Whig party to found the Republican Party. During the Civil War, members of the Democratic Party either supported the Union and the fight against the South or campaigned for peace between the rival factions.
Confederacy
The Confederate States of America formed in 1861 after seven slave-holding Southern states seceded from the Union. By the end of the war, 11 states were part of the Confederacy. The Confederate government of these states was considered illegal by Lincoln and the federal government, though they did elect their own president in Jefferson Davis. Militias supplied by the populous of the individual states formed the Confederate army, which fought against the Union army. The Confederacy collapsed in 1865, marking the end of the Civil War.
Secession
Secession is the withdrawal of one group from within a larger political group. During the Civil War, this was the secession of the Southern states from the Union. This secession began in 1860, shortly before Lincoln took the presidency, as Southern states assumed a Republican government would force emancipation forward. The secession was, to some, a new revolution, “a declaration of independence—from the United States” (25). As secession was illegal under the Constitution, Lincoln and other Republicans viewed the Southern Confederacy not as a legitimate separate nation but a rebellion within US territory, and indeed in the first year of the war Lincoln attempted to deal with secession as one would deal with a civil revolt—through police and not military force.
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By James M. Mcpherson
