A new political movement born out of New York and Philadelphia spread across the country, emerging in Cumberland County in 1854, shaping its politics for more than two years. Spurred by anti-Catholic and anti-immigration sentiment, the Know Nothing party grew to significant prominence if only for a short period during the mid 1850s. Reverend Otis […]
24
Jun
10
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6
Apr
10
Abraham Lincoln in 1860 at the Library of Congress
Posted by Published in Antebellum (1840-1861), Images, Lesson Plans, Letters & DiariesThe Library of Congress provides a wealth of resources for teachers to use in the classroom. Most helpful are the themed Collection Connections, which seek to give historical context to the Library’s collections and assist teachers in using them in the classroom. One of these Collection Connections is on the Abraham Lincoln papers. In this […]
16
Mar
10
Two Communities during the Election of 1860
Posted by Published in 19th Century (1840-1880), Lesson Plans, Rare BooksWilliam G. Thomas III and Edward L. Ayers have a piece of digital scholarship entitled “The Differences Slavery Made: A Close Analysis of Two American Communities” that analyzes Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania in the period just before the Civil War. While the scope of the article is to relate how slavery affected […]
9
Mar
10
Rice University’s project The Papers of Jefferson Davis has been blogged about earlier, but there are two documents relevant to the Election of 1860 that I wanted to point out. The project is an attempt to compile all of Davis’s documents into a 15-volume set (twelve of which has been published so far), and in the […]
2
Mar
10
On February 27, 1860, Abraham Lincoln made a landmark speech in his political career at the Cooper Institute in Manhattan, now known as the Cooper Union Address. This speech catapulted the Illinois senator onto the national scene and Lincoln scholars such as Harold Holzer believe that this speech secured his nomination as the Republican party […]
16
Feb
10
North Carolina and the Election of 1860
Posted by Published in Antebellum (1840-1861), Letters & DiariesAs previously mentioned in this blog, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill supports a fantastic website for researching all aspects of the South during the Civil War era called Documenting the American South. On this website, there are several important resources that relate to the crucial election of 1860. A simple search of […]
8
Feb
10
HarpWeek has an online collection of political cartoons from 14 presidential elections between the years 1860-1912. These cartoons provide a visual insight into the climate surrounding the Election of 1860, and its core issues. Some of the cartoons require a lot of prior historical knowledge, while others can be understood with some basic analysis. HarpWeek […]
15
Jan
10
Papers of Jefferson Davis
Posted by sailerd Published in 19th Century (1840-1880), Images, Letters & DiariesRice University has created a great online supplement for their 12 volume Papers of Jefferson Davis project. While not all of the papers have been posted online, the site offers a nice selection of material from his entire career. One can read “a listing of the demerits Davis received while” at West Point, a newspaper […]
13
Jan
10
Webcast – "America on the Eve of the Civil War"
Posted by sailerd Published in Antebellum (1840-1861), Video“America on the Eve of the Civil War,” a conference held in April 2009 and sponsored by the Virginia Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission, is now available online as a Webcast. Sixteen historians participated in this conference, which included four different sessions – “Taking Stock of the Nation in 1859”, “The Future of […]
6
Nov
09
Buchanan & the Election of 1860
Posted by sailerd Published in Antebellum (1840-1861), Letters & DiariesWhen Democrats could not agree on a single candidate from the 1860 election, the northern and southern wings selected their own – Stephen Douglas and John Breckinridge, respectively. This development alarmed President John Buchanan, as a letter from August 1860 reveals. If “a re-union between the” northern and southern Democrats did not occur, Buchanan told […]
