Tillie; mother; father; wounded soldiers; Rowland Dungan; Gabriel Fry; Confederate soldiers; Abraham Lincoln; telegraphist
Synopsis
Tillie and her family return to their farm to find it jammed with wounded soldiers, and try to assist them. Free black people of Gettysburg are captured by Confederate kidnapers, and haled off to slavery. Retreating Confederates face the disaster that has befallen them. Abraham Lincoln gets his first news of the Battle of Gettysburg.
Abraham Lincoln; John C. Calhoun; Littleton Tazewell; Alexander H. Stephens; Jefferson Davis; visitors
Synopsis
Lincoln sees the Union as originating in 1776, with a commitment to rights and reason, and a rejection of arbitrary power; thus, the Union precedes and predates the Constitution. Others -- including leaders of the Confederacy -- see the Union and the Constitution as a voluntary association of states, for the convenience of the states, maintaining their independence and taking precedence over Union and Constitution alike.
George Washington; Thomas Jefferson; Alexander Hamilton; George Clinton; John Adams; John Randolph; Robert Barnwell Rhett; redcoats; visitor to Washington
Synopsis
Having declared independence on the grounds the British government was excessive, Americans experiment with a weak federal government, but soon recognize that a stronger central power is needed. The new Constitution leaves the upper limits of power vague. Washington, Adams, and Hamilton all insist that the federal power is supreme, but Jefferson and others, while agreeing to the new government, claim that its power is actually sharply limited.
Nicolas Denys; English colonists; slaves; Eli Whitney; cotton planters; Andrew Jackson; Abraham Lincoln; visitor to Washington
Synopsis
North America offers abundant cheap resources, but expensive scarce labor. Schemes to resolve this include slavery, which especially develops as a feature of the south, with its mild winters and long growing seasons. Southern cotton growers push ever westward, adding new states to the Union. But free-labor northerners do the same, loath to fall behind the south in Congressional representation. These movements develop into a race and a conflict.
Abraham Lincoln; Thomas Jefferson; James Madison; Angelina Grimke; Frederick Douglass; Stephen A. Douglas; visitor to Washington
Synopsis
Even slave owners like Jefferson and Madison warned that slavery would choke the nation. Lincoln opines that the Founders elected to end slavery gradually, and took effective steps to do so. Even so, Lincoln carried many contemporary white prejudices concerning black people.
Abraham Lincoln; slaves; slave owners; Union soldiers; Confederate soldiers; Jefferson Davis
Synopsis
Most Americans reject both secession and abolition, but tension rises to the point of war, partly sparked by the westward expansion and the Dred Scott decision. Having tried unsuccessfully to avoid war, Lincoln struggles with how best to wage it. He issues a partial Emancipation proclamation as a war measure, transforming the nature of the conflict.
Despite his dedication to freedom, popular sovereignty, and the rule of law, Lincoln suspends habeas corpus during the crisis, and shuts down several newspapers. The south is particularly undemocratic, relying on fixed elections, lynching, and censorship of the mail.
General Robert E. Lee; General George Gordon Meade; General J.E.B. Stuart; General John Buford; General Lewis Armistead; General James Longstreet; General George Armstrong Custer
Synopsis
As Lee invades Pennsylvania, terrain funnels troops toward Gettysburg, where a major battle develops. With catastrophic results, Lee vainly and repeatedly throws his men at Union forces with superior numbers, position, weaponry, and intelligence. After a three-day battle with horrendous losses on both sides, Lee's army flees southward.
Abraham Lincoln; gravediggers; widow; townsfolk; Sanitary Commission workers
Synopsis
The three-day battle covers the ground with thousands of decomposing dead. The rush to bury them conflicts with the drive to identify them. From this huge need grows the plan for a national cemetery, a creation so significant that the President himself comes for the dedication.
As society develops a more optimistic and egalitarian view of humanity, it transforms its burial grounds from graveyards to restful landscaped cemeteries, of which the new cemetery at Gettysburg became a prime example.
It Is for Us the Living, Rather, to Be Dedicated Here to the Unfinished Work Which They Who Fought Here Have Thus Far so Nobly Advanced
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Abraham Lincoln; Jefferson Davis; Radical Republicans; John Wilkes Booth
Synopsis
Lincoln favors a liberal re-integration of the southern states, but many Congressional leaders demand more federal control. Both agree on extended political rights for African Americans, enraging John Wilkes Booth.
Increasingly infuriated both at Union victories and at rights for African Americans, Booth murders Lincoln, then is killed himself during the manhunt. His co-conspirators botch their assigned assassinations, and most are executed.
Allied with other southern politicians, new President Andrew Johnson fights back against rights gained by African Americans, stealing from them many hard-won liberties.
Despite the widespread religiosity of the day, Lincoln for most of his life declined any religious life. As the war went on he began to speak more in religious terms -- perhaps because of personal change, perhaps because it was expected. Churches disagreed fiercely on slavery, but faith became a major support for the slaves themselves.
Abraham Lincoln; Woodrow Wilson; Frederick Douglass; Booker T. Washington; Thurgood Marshall; Ross Barnett; Orval Faubus; George C. Wallace; J. Lindsay Almond Jr.; the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; visitor to Washington
Synopsis
For whites, a new birth of freedom means the triumph of free labor, the restoration of the Union, white supremacy, and a white-on-white reconciliation that ignores the reality of slavery driving the Civil War. For African Americans, although freed from slavery, the new birth would wait a hundred years and only come through sustained mass action against violent reaction. Despite the many failures of its application, the insistence that all men are created equal proved powerful enough to work its way.
Abraham Lincoln; Lyndon B. Johnson; the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; the Reverend Theodore Parker; Daniel Webster; Cleon of Athens
Synopsis
Lincoln built these final remarks on precedent, and others since then have built upon Lincoln's words in turn. They reflect the Civil War's resolution of tensions between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. They imply that the United States is one nation of people, rather than a collection of states, and that Washington, rather than the state capitals, "is the people's foremost defender of freedom and liberty."