DelawarePoliticians freed the slaves with no compensation.

DelawarePoliticians freed the slaves with no compensation.

DelawarePoliticians of the Northern states pressed to end it, both because it was considered immoral and because white labor could not compete with unpaid black labor. The North demanded for its industrial growth a protective tariff, federal subsidies for shipping and internal improvements, and a sound banking and currency system. The West looked to Congress for free homesteads and federal aid for its roads and waterways. The South, however, regarded such measures as discriminatory, favoring Northern commercial interests, and it found intolerable the rise of antislavery agitation in the North.

In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected president as the candidate of the Republican Party, which opposed the spread of slavery. The state of South Carolina had threatened to secede if the Republicans won, and in December 1860 it did so. Other slavery states followed in quick succession, and in February 1861 they formed a confederacy, the Confederate States of America. Delaware was a slaveholding border state with many Confederate sympathizers; Lincoln did not carry the state in 1860. However, Delaware had more economic ties with the North than with the South; by 1860 fewer than 2000 of the almost 22,000 blacks in the state were slaves, and most Delawareans opposed the extension of slavery. There was never any movement in Delaware to secede from the Union, and it remained loyal during the American Civil War (1861-1865) that followed the secessions. More than 13,000 Delawareans, nearly one-tenth of the states population, served in the Union Army, and several hundred fought for the Confederacy.

Fort Delaware, on Pea Patch Island in the Delaware River, was garrisoned by Union Army soldiers and served as a prison for Confederate prisoners of war. In 1861 Lincoln proposed that Delawares slaves be freed and the owners compensated. That proposal failed, partly because of party politics on the part of the Delaware Democrats, and in 1865 the 13th Amendment to the Constitution freed the slaves with no compensation. The Democrats controlled the legislature throughout the war and repeatedly railed at the Republicans as the party that had started the war and was going to make blacks equal to whites. In the 1864 presidential election Lincoln again failed to carry Delaware, one of only three states that preferred his opponent, General George B. McClellan.

IllinoisAn overwhelming majority of Illinoisans supported the Lincoln Administration in the Civil War. The fighting never reached Illinois, but more than 250,000 men from the state served in the Union Army, including the famous general (and later president) Ulysses S. Grant, who had moved from St. Louis, Missouri, to Galena, Illinois, in 1860. In the southern part of the state, some Illinoisans who sympathized with the South created a short-lived movement to found a separate state allied with the Confederacy later in the war, and secret societies opposed to continuing the war also flourished in Illinois. In the presidential election of 1864 Illinois again voted for Lincoln, and the Republicans also gained control of the state legislature.

On February 1, 1865, near the end of the war, Illinois became the first state to ratify the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which abolished slavery.IndianaThe French and the early American settlers from the South had brought black slaves into Indiana, but the number of slaves in the state never exceeded 250. Slavery was prohibited under the terms of both the Northwest Ordinance and the first state constitution of 1816. Although most Indianans known as Hoosiers were of Southern stock in 1860, they were from the upland South, where slaves were few, and opposed the extension of slavery to the territories. Most of them were equally opposed to interference with slavery where it already existed.

Fearing an influx of free blacks and the resulting economic competition, Hoosiers in 1851 put a clause in the new state constitution forbidding blacks to settle in the state. The new Republican Party, organized in 1854 to oppose the spread of slavery, won power in Indiana in 1860 with the election of Henry Smith Lane as governor and Oliver P. Morton as lieutenant governor. When Lane became a U.S.

senator in 1861, Morton became governor. Morton strongly backed Republican President Abraham Lincoln. efore the 1860 elections, the Southern state of South Carolina had threatened to secede from the union if Lincoln won. In December 1860, it did so. Other Southern states soon followed, and in February 1861 they declared themselves a confederacy, the Confederate States of America. In April 1861, Confederate forces bombarded a Union fort, beginning the American Civil War (1861-1865). Lincoln requested the other states to send troops to quell the rebellion.

Indiana responded, and entered the Civil War on the Union side. Morton enjoyed a high degree of popular support in the early part of the war, and it was in large part due to his encouragement that Indiana contributed 200,000 troops to the Union forces. Later, however, opposition to Morton and, to a lesser extent, the Lincoln Administration mounted. After a federal law was passed in 1862 permitting the drafting of soldiers, there were frequent antidraft riots in Indiana, mainly in the southern part of the state. In the 1862 elections to the state legislature, the Democrats gained control of both houses. During the war, the Republicans tried to label their Democratic opponents as Copperheads (northern Democrats sympathetic to the rebels), but on the whole the Democrats in Indiana supported the Union war effort.

They were hostile, however, to the zealously partisan Morton. In 1863 the hostility between the governor and the legislature led to a complete cessation of constitutional government and a failure to appropriate funds to carry on state functions.IowaMost Iowans did not support slavery, but since the Missouri Compromise in 1820 had forbidden slavery in Iowa and the other territories of the northern plains, the issue did not dominate early Iowa politics. In 1854, however, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which nullified the Missouri Compromise by allowing the settlers to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. Iowans reacted quickly.

Protest groups organized to oppose the measure because it meant that slavery might be legal on Iowas western border. In 1854 James Grimes, an antislavery member of the Whig Party, was elected governor and helped to organize the antislavery Republican Party in Iowa. Southwestern Iowa became a center of supplies for antislavery forces in Kansas when fighting broke out there following the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Iowa Quakers were especially active in the movement to abolish slavery. Eastern crusaders on their way to Kansas traveled through Iowa to avoid passing through Missouri (a slave state), and an underground railroad across the southern part of Iowa helped runaway slaves escape. The famous abolitionist John Brown not only used Iowa as a base for some of his antislavery activities, but he trained his band in Iowa for the raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now in West Virginia).

When the Civil War began in 1861, most Iowa troops were sent south into Missouri and the western campaigns. The state supplied more soldiers for the Union Army per capita than any other northern state, about 80,000 Iowans in all. Many Iowa women also contributed to the war effort by taking over the family farms while their husbands and sons were in battle. Annie Wittenmeyer of Keokuk won national recognition for her work providing better diets for the sick and wounded in military hospitals.

KansasShortly after Kansas achieved statehood the Civil War began. Kansas contributed more than 20,000 men (two-thirds of the adult males in the state) to the Union effort. Blacks and Native Americans each contributed soldiers to the Union troops raised in Kansas. Kansass troops served on the plains, saw action in Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, and the Indian Territory, and the Eighth Kansas Infantry distinguished itself at Lookout Mountain and Chickamauga.

There were no major battles in Kansas, but Kansas troops helped pursue a retreating Confederate force under General Sterling Price in October 1864, following his defeat at the battle of Westport in present-day Kansas City, Missouri. The Confederates were caught in Kansas, but Price managed to escape.KentuckyThe failure of Crittendens compromise presaged the outbreak of the American Civil War (1861-1865) in April. Kentuckys governor, Beriah Magoffin, refused both the Unions and the Confederacys call for volunteers. In May the state legislature resolved that Kentucky would take no part in the fighting, and Magoffin issued a proclamation declaring the state to be neutral in the conflict.

Because of the states strategic location, neither side fully respected Kentuckys neutrality. Recruiters from both the Union and the Confederacy enlisted Kentuckians. First the Confederacy, then the Union, began moving troops into the state.

Throughout the war Kentucky remained at the mercy of the occupying armies. The first major battle of the war in Kentucky, the Battle of Mill Springs or Logans Crossroads, fought at Nancy in January 1862, resulted in a Confederate defeat. Then, late in the summer of 1862, Confederate forces embarked on a bold campaign to take Kentucky.

They pushed northward and westward into the state from central Tennessee and defeated Union Army troops at Richmond and Munfordville. However, the main Confederate advance was halted at Perryville on October 8, 1862. The Battle of Perryville, also known as the Battle of Chaplin Hills, was the bloodiest engagement in the states history. More than 7600 casualties were counted. No other large-scale battles took place in the state, although raids by Confederate General John Hunt Morgan gained much notice. During the later years of the war, guerrilla bands, including the notorious group led by Captain William Quantrill, made sporadic raids in Kentucky.

In November 1861, without legal sanction, supporters of the Confederacy met at Russellville and passed an act of secession, declaring Kentucky to be a Confederate state. This action was recognized by the Confederacy but not by the Union. The state was a star in both flags. Throughout the war, Kentuckians remained divided in their loyalties to North and South.

A total of about 100,000 Kentuckians, including more than 20,000 blacks, joined the Union Army, while about 40,000 residents joined the Confederate forces. A number of native Kentuckians played a prominent role in the Civil War. Besides the opposing presidents Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, Confederate Generals John Bell Hood and Albert Sidney Johnston had both been born in Kentucky. Kentucky was the only state represented in the cabinets of both the Union and Confederate governments: James Speed was the Union attorney general, and John Cabell Breckinridge was the Confederate secretary of war.

MaineMaine reformers also worked to abolish slavery, founding the Maine Antislavery Society in the 1830s and gaining strength in the decades before the Civil War (1861-1865). During the Civil War, about 73,000 Maine residents fought in the Union army and navy. Maine regiments played key roles in many battles, notably the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, a turning point in the war. Maine produced a number of political and military leaders in this period, including Generals Oliver Otis Howard and Joshua Chamberlain; Hannibal Hamlin, a former governor and U.S.

senator who served as vice president under Abraham Lincoln from 1861 to 1865; and William Fessenden, a powerful U.S. senator who became Lincolns secretary of the treasury in 1864. Hamlin and Fessenden were prominent leaders of Maines Republican Party, which gained power in the Civil War era and remained dominant until the 1950s.MarylandMaryland had ties to both North and South. Some Marylanders, particularly the states 14,000 slaveholders, favored secession. Many more opposed it but also opposed the use of armed force to return seceded states to the Union.

In Baltimore on April 19, 1861, a pro-Confederacy mob attacked Massachusetts troops as they made their way between rail stations, shedding the first blood of the war and causing outrage in the loyal states. President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, thus allowing him to detain Confederate sympathizers without a court hearing, and by mid-May Union Army soldiers occupied Federal Hill in Baltimore. Baltimore remained occupied throughout the war. Realizing the strategic importance of keeping Maryland in the Union, the Lincoln Administration employed force as necessary to discourage secessionism. In the 1861 election for governor, the military took measures, including the arrest of many pro-Confederacy politicians, to guarantee the election of a pro-Union candidate. A constitutional convention in 1864 abolished slavery, making Maryland the first state to do so on its own.

Eventually more than 50,000 Maryland’s fought for the Union and about 22,000 volunteered for the Confederacy.MassachusettsMassachusetts was a center of abolitionist sentiment in the years before the Civil War (1861-1865). The Underground Railroad, a network of antislavery northerners, brought many fugitive slaves through Massachusetts on their way to Canada.

In 1854 Massachusetts business leaders formed the New England Emigrant Aid Society to help men from the antislavery Northeast travel to the Kansas Territory, which was at the center of controversy over extending slavery beyond the South. Antislavery advocates hoped that the votes of these settlers would keep Kansas from becoming a slave state.When the Civil War began, Massachusetts was the first state to send troops to support the federal government, and when secessionists in Maryland killed several of these men in riots, Massachusetts soldiers became the first to die for the Union. Massachusetts also was the first Northern state to establish a black regiment, the 54th Massachusetts Regiment. More than 146,000 Massachusetts men served in the Union Army during the war.MichiganMichigan played an active role in opposing slavery before the American Civil War (1861-1865). Many of its citizens were originally from New England and western New York, centers of abolitionist sentiment, and the state was often a final stop in the United States on the Underground Railroad for fugitive slaves seeking safety in Canada.

The first state Republican Party in the nation was founded in Michigan in 1854 to oppose the extension of slavery.More than 90,000 Michigan men served in the Union Army and Navy during the Civil War, and a woman, Sarah Emma Edmonds, disguised as a man, fought with the Union forces. George Armstrong Custer, whose home was at Monroe, was the states most famous Union cavalryman. A Michigan regiment captured Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Georgia, where he fled following the collapse of the Southern armies in 1865. Michigan Senator Zachariah Chandler was nationally known during and after the Civil War for his support of a radical policy for Reconstruction in the South.The Civil War hastened Michigans change from an agricultural to an industrial state. By 1880 manufacturing had increased threefold, and rapid industrialization continued.

Detroits manufacturing output in 1900 exceeded that for the entire state in 1870. Large numbers of Polish immigrants settled in Detroit, becoming the citys largest ethnic group.New JerseyNew Jersey did not play an important role in the movement for the abolition of slavery. In 1804 a law for the gradual emancipation of slaves was passed, but not until 1846 was slavery permanently abolished. Even then, slaves were bound over to their masters as apprentices, and the difference between the two conditions was often slight. The Underground Railroad was active in the state, helping runaway slaves from the South reach safety in the Northern states and Canada. But New Jersey officially obeyed the federal Fugitive Slave Laws, which required state officials to help return runaway slaves to their Southern masters.

As the outbreak of the American Civil War (1861-1865) neared, antiwar elements had strong support among New Jersey industrialists, who feared the loss of valuable Southern markets for their products. Even though the state responded warmly to a visit by President Abraham Lincoln in 1861, it was the only Northern state that did not give him all of its electoral votes in the presidential elections of 1860 and 1864. If New Jersey was not unanimous in its support of the crusade against slavery, it responded vigorously to secession by Southern states and to Lincolns call to arms. New Jersey put more than 88,000 men in uniform. About 6300 New Jersey residents were killed during the war, among them General Philip “Fighting Phil” Kearny.New YorkThe 1860 presidential election divided the generally antislavery Northern states from the proslavery Southern states. New York gave its 35 electoral votes to Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party in this crucial election.

However, not all New Yorkers favored Lincolns efforts to save the Union. Mayor Fernando Wood of New York City and many merchants, caring little about slavery, wanted the city to remain neutral so it could maintain its commercial ties with the Southern states, as well as with the North. Poor immigrants also opposed Lincolns policies, especially his stand against slavery. They feared free blacks would compete with them for jobs and bring them economic ruin.

However, most citizens rallied to the Union cause in the American Civil War (1861-1865), which began a month after Lincoln was inaugurated and Southern states had started to secede. One-third of the casualties of the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861 were soldiers from New York. But as the war dragged on, enthusiasm declined. In 1863 Congress passed the first military draft law, but allowed exemptions for men who could pay $300 or hire substitutes.

This provision, called the “Rich Mans Exemption,” caused widespread anger among the poor workingmen of New York City, especially Irish immigrants. When the law took effect in July 1863, a mob burned the draft headquarters, then rampaged through the city, lynching blacks, burning neighborhoods, and looting. Federal troops had to be pulled off the battlefield to end the Draft Riots, in which more than 1000 people were killed and about $2 million in property was damaged. The Civil War strongly affected New Yorks development. Although some industries boomed, the rate of industrial growth slowed down. Factories making war goods ran extra shifts, but cotton mills cut back to half time.

Factory workers suffered a cut in buying power because prices rose faster than wages. On the other hand, rural New York prospered because of rising farm prices. This boom was offset in the long run, however, because the countryside lost thousands of young men to the Army and, after the war, to the cities.OhioIn the years before the American Civil War (1861-1865), Ohio was home to many antislavery publications and an elaborate Underground Railroad network, which helped fugitive slaves escape to Canada. When war broke out, more than 30,000 Ohio residents, more than twice the states quota, volunteered to fight in the Union Army. However, as the war dragged on, support for the war declined, and more Ohioans resisted draft calls.

Support increased for the Copperheads, those who advocated an immediate end to fighting by the Union. In 1863 one of the most prominent Copperheads, Ohio Congressman Clement Laird Vallandigham, won the Democratic nomination for governor and made a surprisingly strong showing in the election, even though he was defeated. However, Ohio remained firmly on the side of the Union throughout the war.

PennsylvaniaIn 1860 the Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln for the presidency. It was feared that a Republican could not win in Democratic Pennsylvania, so the Republican Party abandoned its name in Pennsylvania and presented Lincoln as the candidate of the Peoples Party, capturing the support of many voters who would not have voted for a Republican abolitionist. Pennsylvania Republicans split into two factions dominated by rival politicians: Andrew Gregg Curtin, elected governor in 1860, and Simon Cameron, a U.S. senator.

Lincolns election and the continuing conflicts between the North and South over slavery and states rights led to the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861. Most Pennsylvanians, regardless of their party, vigorously supported the Union. Cameron became Lincolns first secretary of war. In 1862 Curtin played a leading role in the Altoona Conference, where Northern governors pledged to support a national draft.

In addition to its militia, Pennsylvania supplied more than 375,000 men to the Union Army and Navy. Philadelphia financier Jay Cooke relieved the hard-pressed Treasury Department by marketing federal bonds, raising more than $1 billion in loans for the federal government during the war. Factories in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia produced huge amounts of heavy weapons and small arms.