In late 1864 he spread out his men 50 miles wide and attacked the Confederacy on the unprotected Georgia countryside. It resulted in the capture of Savannah. In 1881 Sherman established the famous school at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and he died in 1891. Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass was born a slave in Maryland in 1817. In 1838 he obtained seaman’s papers from a free black and escaped to New Bedford.
In 1841 he joined the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. With Douglass’s great speeches, people didn’t believe that he used to be a slave. Douglass wrote a book called Life and Times of Frederick Douglass to tell people about his life when he was a slave. After 2 years of living in the British Isles, some of his friends bought his legal freedom for 150 ponds and he came back to the United States.During the Civil War Douglass fought for black people to be able to fight for the Union. Before he died in 1895, he stayed an active part of the United States. Harriet Beecher Stowe Harriet Stowe was the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, an anti-slavery novel that is sometimes thought of as one of the causes of the Civil War. Stowe’s first publication was The Mayflower, which were sketches of scenes and characters of the descendants of the Pilgrims. When she and her husband moved to Maine in 1850, she wrote The Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Dred: A Tale of Great Dismal Swamp. All of her novels were written because of her hatred for slavery. She still wrote novels, essays, and poetry after the Civil War about New England scenes. Harriet Stowe is one of America’s most recognized writers. Sojourner Truth Sojourner Truth was an American preacher and abolitionist. She was born into slavery and given the name Isabella Baumfree.
Sojourner ran away after New York’s emancipation act of 1827. Her master didn’t pay attention to it. When she got to New York City she joined a religious cult, but left in 1843 because she didn’t know what the cult did. She struggled for black emancipation and women’s suffrage during the Civil War.She continued to work after the war for equal rights for women of all colors. Abraham Lincoln Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809 in Hardin County, Kentucky in a log cabin. In 1830 the Lincolns moved from Indiana to Illinois. Lincoln was elected to the Illinois lower house in 1834 and served four terms until 1841.Lincoln became a lawyer and moved to Springfield the following year. There he met Mary Todd and they married in 1842 and had four sons. Lincoln served one term in the House of Representatives from 1847 to 1849. In 1860 he won the presidential election. By the time of his inauguration 7 states had seceded from the Union. The Civil War began when South Carolina fired on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861.
Lincoln gave command to Ulysses Grant during the Civil War. A couple of years later he allowed blacks to fight in the army. Lincoln signed the 13th amendment in 1864 that abolished slavery. On April 14, 1865 Lincoln was shot while attending a performance at Appomattox Court House by John Booth.
Thaddeus Stevens Thaddeus Stevens was one of the most influential Republican leaders during the reconstruction era. In 1861 he became chairman of the House of Representatives. He played an important role in the printing of paper money during the Civil War. His greatest development was the Reconstruction policy. During the Civil War he fought for antislavery measures and stricter terms for Reconstruction. After the Confederate surrender, Stevens didn’t agree with President Johnson’s Reconstruction plan and wanted a more effective policy.
In 1868 Stevens was a prosecutor in the president’s impeachment trial. Jefferson Davis Jefferson Davis was the only president of the Confederate States of America. He struggled to lead the Confederacy to freedom during the United States Civil War. Davis wanted Mississippi to leave the Union and he wanted to be the commander of the southern army. Instead he was elected president of the Confederacy.
For the four years he was in office he gave his complete dedication to the country. Even though he tried hard, he wasn’t a very good president. He kept friends in office that weren’t trained and he wasted some of his time on unimportant matters. His greatest weakness was that he couldn’t work well with other people.
Because of these things, he gradually became unpopular as the war continued. In 1865, when the Confederacy was losing, Davis fled from Richmond and hoped to continue the war from the deep south or the west of the Mississippi River. When he retired he wrote books about the defense of the South and about himself. John Coldwell Calhoun John Calhoun was the vice-president of the United States and worked for Southern rights.
He also served in the state legislature and Congress. In Congress he was a war hawk. James Monroe appointed Calhoun as his Secretary of War in 1817. In 1828 he wrote the South Carolina Exposition and Protest which stated that the state should have the power to nullify federal laws. In 1828 Calhoun was reelected vice-president when Andrew Jackson was president. When Jackson didn’t like South Carolina’s efforts to nullify the tariff, he resigned from vice-president. Calhoun then served in the Senate and was a good spokesman for slavery and Southern rights. For the last years of his life he defended the right of slavery to go into federal territories.
He died on March 31, 1850. Henry Clay Henry Clay was a key figure in U.S. politics in the early 19th century. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1811. Clay was the leader of the War Hawks in Congress who wanted to go to war against Great Britain. In 1815 he made a program that would build roads linking the East and the West. Clay ran for president in 1824, but when no candidate won a majority, Clay supported John Adams. When Adam’s won, Clay was named Secretary of State. In the 1840’s he help to guide a new tariff law and a national bank to Congress.
Clay helped persuade congress to accept the Compromise of 1850, which saved the Union for a decade. Andrew Johnson Johnson was born in Raleigh, North Carolina on Dec. 29, 1808 and when his family moved to Tennessee he opened a tailor shop in Greeneville. Before Johnson became vice-president he was an alderman, mayor, state representative, senator, congressman, and a governor. When the Union occupied part of Tennessee in 1862, Lincoln chose Johnson for the military governor. In 1865 He was elected vice-president with Lincoln as president. When Lincoln was shot Johnson became the president of the United States. He was a Southerner and he believed that whites should have control over government and society. He also believed that Congress didn’t have the power to interfere with the southern states. When Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act and Johnson vetoed it, he tried to fire his secretary of war.
Congress decided to impeach the president for misdemeanors. The Senate decided that he wasn’t guilty. He died on July 31, 1875. History.
