The Second American Revolution

1. Emancipation Proclamation (September 17, 1862) Antietam (September 22, 1862) Homestead Act (January 1, 1863) Land Grant College Act (1862) Transcontinental Railroad (1862) Gettysburg Address (November 19, 1863) I. Positive and Negative Liberty II. A New Nation III. A New Birth of Freedom The Second American Revolution Terms

2. I. Positive and Negative Liberty

3. “The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name———liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names———liberty and tyranny.

4. The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails to—day among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold the processes by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage, hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty.”

5. Many definitions of liberty assume that the main sphere is political, and that the greatest potential threat to the liberties and rights of the individual comes from government itself.

7. Beginning with the 13th Amendment, six of the next seven expanded the power of the federal government. The very language of these amendments illustrates the point: instead of applying the phrase “shall not” to the national government, everyone of them grants significant new powers to the national government with the phrase “Congress shall have the power to enforce this article.”

8. II. A New Nation

9. Lincoln’s Plan for Gradual Emancipation in the Spring of 1862 • The states abolish slavery. • Compensation for owners. • Federal aid states. • Gradual emancipation. • Colonization of freed Blacks.

10. Response from the Border States • Lincoln offered money and gradual emancipation to the boarder states in March, May, and July, of 1862. • A man from Kentucky fumed in spring of 1862: “I utterly spit at it and despise it. Emancipation is simply an absurdity. . . . There is not enough power in the world to compel it to be done.“”

11. Horace Greeley and “The Prayer of Twenty Millions” “We complain that the Union cause has suffered, and is now suffering immensely, from mistaken deference to Rebel Slavery. . . . There is not one disinterested, determined, intelligent champion of the Union cause who does not feel that all attempts to put down the Rebellion and at the same time uphold its facilitating cause are preposterous and futile.” - August 20, 1862

12. Lincoln’s Response “My this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.”

13. Cabinet Meeting, July 22, 1862

14. Some of the dead at Antietam

15. The Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation “That on the first day of January in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state, or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free” - September 22, 1862

19. Legal Tender Act (1862)

20. The government increased the tariff to raise money and protect northern industry. • The government created the Bureau of Internal Revenue and enacted the nation’s first income tax. • The federal government instituted the first draft in the nation’s history and by the end of the war over 2 million men had served in the army.

21. III. A New Birth of Freedom

22. Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

23. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

24. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. 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. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.