“The Inaugural”

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From the collections of PVMA • Digital image © Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Assoc. • Image use information


About this item

The election of Abraham Lincoln as president set off a chain of events that would end badly. Almost immediately agitators in the South began speaking of secession and in December, 1860, South Carolina had voted to secede from the Union. By February seven southern states had left and on February 4, 1861, they voted to form the Confederate States of America. However, four crucial states – Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina – still had not left the union, along with the slaveholding states bordering the north, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. Without them the new Confederate republic would not have been viable. Lincoln directed his First Inaugural Address to them in particular: “We must not be enemies,” he said; the “passion” felt during the election “must not break our bonds of affection.” Look, he appealed, to the “better angels of our nature” to resolve the crisis.

The question of the Supreme Court addressed here had to do with several rulings it made in the 1850s, particularly the Dred Scott Case (1857). In this ruling Chief Justice Roger Taney, an enslaver from Maryland, argued that “Negroes of African descent,” regardless of whether they were enslaved or not, could not be citizens of the United States; further, they “had no rights the white man should respect.” This ruling was widely ignored but its tone and argument turned northern public opinion against the court.

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Details

Item typePeriodicals
Newspaper
PublisherGreenfield Gazette and Courier
Date1861-03-11
PlaceGreenfield, Massachusetts
TopicCivil Rights, Protest, Dissent
Politics, Government, Law, Civics
EraCivil War and Reconstruction, 1861–1877
EventAmerican Civil War. 1861–1865
MaterialPaper
Process/FormatPrinting; Ink
Dimension detailsProcess Material: printed paper, ink with manuscript Height: 20.00 in Width: 2.50 in
Catalog #L02.118
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Greenfield Gazette and Courier. “The Inaugural.” March 11, 1861. Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, American Centuries. https://americancenturies.org/collection/l02-118/. Accessed on October 15, 2024.

Please note: Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.