Abraham Lincoln’s Scientific Approach to the Civil War

Coast Survey Slavery MapLincoln took a scientific approach to military strategy. The Anaconda plan’s focus was on securing the coastlines and the Mississippi River. Recognizing New Orleans as the hub of the cotton trade and commerce, Lincoln saw it as the first port to be targeted for blockade. He also hoped to block southern ship traffic from Charleston, South Carolina to cut off Confederate attempts to woo Great Britain and France to their side. Helping him make this happen was Alexander Dallas Bache and the Coast Survey. The Coast Survey had been authorized by Thomas Jefferson, and Bache, who was Benjamin Franklin’s great-grandson, was quick to send nautical charts of the Chesapeake Bay to Lincoln. He also forwarded two terrestrial maps produced by the Survey that had far-reaching influence on Lincoln’s decisions on emancipation and military strategy.

The first map was of the state of Virginia. A relatively new technique of color-coded shading was used to show the percentage of enslaved population in each county based on the 1860 census. The darker shaded counties reflecting higher percentages of enslaved persons were primarily in the tidewater region and toward the southern part of the state. The mountainous western counties held only small percentages of enslaved. That told Lincoln the western counties were less likely to support the insurrection, and indeed, those counties rejoined the Union as the new state of West Virginia.

The second map showed the entire slaveholding portion of the country. Lincoln quickly recognized that the four “border” states—Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware—had relatively few slaves in most of their counties. That fact helped inform Lincoln’s strategies to retain the border states in the Union, including proposals for gradual compensated emancipation in an effort to stimulate the process of freeing the enslaved. The map also clearly showed that eastern Tennessee had relatively few slaves, which again allowed him to target that region for initial military and diplomatic forays in the hope many of the residents would retain their Union sentiments. Also clear was that the highest densities of enslaved populations were in the cotton belt of the deep South and along the Mississippi River borders of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas, where over 90 percent of the populations of some counties were enslaved. The map reinforced the importance of capturing New Orleans to cut off the main supply and transport line for the Confederate economy. Controlling the Mississippi was the key to the war, which “could never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket.” It also reinforced the belief that the deep South was so dependent on slavery it would never willingly give it up. Lincoln found this second map especially fascinating, according to Francis Carpenter, who spent six months at the White House preparing his famous painting, “First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Lincoln.” Carpenter added the southern slavery map to the lower right corner of his painting, reflecting its significance to the decision-making process.

[Adapted from Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America, now available at booksellers everywhere.]

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius

 

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America was released on September 1, 2022.

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David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

A Brief History of Systemic Racism in America

The Soiling of Old Glory by Stanley FormanEmmett Till, a 14-year-old African American falsely accused of flirting with a white woman, was lynched in 1955. George Floyd died under the knee of a police officer in 2020. Together, and with thousands of other examples and millions of cases, the long history of systemic racism continues in America. To provide some background, what follows is a brief outline of the history of systemic racism and discrimination in the United States.

White Lion, 1619: Jamestown, the first permanent settlement of white Europeans on the continent that would become America, was visited by a privateer sailing ship called the White Lion. On board were several dozen Africans stolen from a Spanish slave ship San Juan Bautista, headed for Veracruz, New Spain (now part of Mexico). Some of the Africans were traded by the White Lion crew for food at Virginia Colony’s Point Comfort. Slavery had come to America.

U.S. Declaration of Independence, 1776: When Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, it originally had a clause attacking slavery as something forced on the American colonies by the British rulers and an antithesis to the Declaration’s concept of “all men are created equal.” The clause was removed during debate as southern slaveholding states in conjunction with their northern merchant partners refused to agree.

U.S. Constitution, 1789: After several years under the wholly ineffective Articles of Confederation, delegates began working on a new constitution in 1787. The U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1788 and took effect March 4, 1789 with George Washington as the nation’s first president. Delegates engaged in significant debate about slavery, again with South Carolina and other southern states working with northern merchants to void any sections that would have eliminated slavery. Forced to compromise to get all the existing states to agree, the Constitution tacitly acknowledges the presence of slavery, although they took great pains to avoid using the words “slave” or “slavery” in the text, relying on euphemisms like “all other persons.” Article 1, Section 2 allows slaveholding states to count “three fifths of all other persons” (i.e., enslaved people) for purposes of determining the number of representatives in Congress. Article 1, Section 9 prohibits Congress from banning the “migration or importation of such persons” (i.e., the international slave trade) for 20 years. Article 4, Section 2 dictates that any “person held to labour or service” (i.e. slaves) in one state that escapes to another still remains a slave and must be returned. Thus, the Constitution, while many members wanted to eliminate slavery, tacitly acknowledges its continued presence.

Abolition of International Slave Trade, 1808: As noted above, the Constitution did not allow the end of the international slave trade for twenty years after the Constitution was ratified. In 1807, Congress, including some southern slaveholding states, voted to abolish the slave trade, effective January 1, 1808. Congress had already banned slavery in the northwest territories via the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 (a few months prior to the Constitution). While slavery still existed, there were actions taken in an attempt to encourage its demise.

Antebellum Period, 1789-1860: Many of the founders believed that slavery was on a path to its “ultimate extinction.” The formal end of the international slave trade, the banning of slavery in the territories, and the gradual elimination of slavery in the northern states seemed to signal that end. However, Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin made it more profitable to grow cotton in the South. As smaller farms were bought up by rich plantation owners, more acreage was planted, thus requiring more enslaved people for labor. In addition, the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 doubled the land area available for expansion. The Mexican War in 1847 again enlarged the nation by a third, now essentially making the United States a coast-to-coast nation. As these territories formed into states, they provided potential new plantations, but more importantly, new slaveholding power in Congress. A series of compromises attempted to deal with “the slavery question” inherent in this western expansion. All of these compromises provided continued power to slave states, which simultaneously threatened to secede if new power was not extended to them. As slavery expanded, it became more and more likely that a peaceful resolution of the slavery issue was not possible.

Civil War, 1861-1865: Led by South Carolina, the southern slaveholding states seceded from the Union, claiming that the election of “Black Republican” Abraham Lincoln was an attack on slavery despite Lincoln’s insistence (and the 1860 Republican platform) that no attempt would be made to ban slavery from those states in which it existed. In fact, Lincoln and most Republicans believed that the Constitution barred federal authorities from abolishing slavery. As had occurred with all the northern states that enacted state legislation to remove slavery, Lincoln and Congress knew that it was up to the individual southern states to choose to do the same. And yet the war came. In the midst of the war, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a war measure, knowing that it had authority only during a time of insurrection and would become moot once the war ended. All of the southern states stated that slavery was the cause of their secession and the war, and that they believed that whites were superior to blacks, and that this was the natural order of things. John C. Calhoun had declared a decade earlier that the highest form of civilization was a chain of hierarchy from master to slave, and that slavery was “a positive good.” Alexander Stephens, former Congressman and newly elected as the Confederate Vice President, declared in his “Cornerstone” speech that the Confederacy was born of the belief that the nation’s “foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery – subordination to the superior race – is his natural and normal condition.” White supremacy and racism was officially codified.

13th, 14th, 15th Amendments, 1865-1870: Lincoln understood that the Emancipation Proclamation was a temporary measure and immediately began lobbying Congress to pass the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. As anyone who has seen Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln movie knows, Lincoln forcefully pushed for passage of an amendment to forever ban slavery from the United States. After his assassination, the 14th Amendment provided for citizenship and equal protection under the law to all persons born or naturalized in the United States. The 15th Amendment declared that no citizen shall be denied the right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” These amendments were an attempt to protect the rights of formerly enslaved people, free blacks, and all American citizens.

Reconstruction, 1863-1877: Even before the war was over, Lincoln began the process of reconstructing the United States by defining the conditions under which the former Confederate states could be brought back into the Union. States that had been entirely or partially reclaimed by Union forces (e.g., Louisiana) were supported in their efforts to reestablish themselves. Following the war, states had to acknowledge the sovereignty of the federal authority and ratify the 13th amendment. Free and formerly enslaved African Americans were protected under the three reconstruction amendments, began work and education to allow them to exist as free men and women, eagerly embraced their right to vote, and ran for local, state, and national office. Unfortunately, over time the North lost interest in protecting their rights (the South showed no interest from the beginning) and those rights slowly eroded away. As W.E.B. Dubois put it, “the slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.”

Jim Crow/Segregation/White Supremacy, 1877-1965: As the rights supposedly guaranteed under Reconstruction faded, white Americans began a system of blatant racism and white supremacy designed to keep black Americans from getting “too uppity.” As under the slave hierarchy, black men and women were treated by individuals, then groups, then by governments as inferior. Several supposedly “Christian” organizations, including the Ku Klux Klan, grew as a means of keeping the black population “in their place.” This was blatant white supremacy and systemic racism enforced through terrorist activities like cross burning and lynching, as well as by unfair “separate but equal” facilities. Black men like Emmett Till were summarily hanged without trial simply for the “crime” of not being subservient enough to white people. Local law enforcement and conservative politicians often were the leaders of the KKK and lynchings were codified into both practice, and in many cases, the law. Separate but equal, which needless to say wasn’t actually equal, became the law of the land, as had slavery once been.

Civil Rights Acts, 1964-1965Through the persistence of African American civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, President John F. Kennedy proposed and Lyndon Johnson pushed through the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Civil Rights Act ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The Voting Rights Act of 1865 sought to eliminate the barriers that state and local governments had erected to prevent African Americans from exercising their right to vote. One hundred years after emancipation and the right to freedom was established, African Americans were still attempting to be treated as equal under the law.

Shelby County v. Holder, 2013: In 2013, the Republican-controlled U.S. Supreme Court eliminated a key section of the Voting Rights Act that required states with a history of discrimination to get pre-clearance prior to making changes to their voting laws. This provision was necessary because many states (primarily what today we call “red states”) long had used Jim Crow and other laws to keep minorities from voting. Immediately after the Supreme Court eliminated the provision, supposedly because “it was no longer needed,” many states enacted laws that do exactly what the Court had suggested would not happen (which everyone, in fact, knew would happen). States began systematically putting up barriers to voting by minorities, including requiring special IDs while eliminating the local offices in which they could be obtained. Suddenly voting precincts in minority areas were eliminated, forcing voters to travel long distances and wait for many hours in long lines. Precincts in areas dominated by white and affluent voters were expanded. Hundreds of thousands of voters were summarily eliminated from voter rolls in minority-dominant areas. Gerrymandering was expanded to an extreme to ensure Republicans would win more seats even when receiving fewer votes. Systemic racism had joined forces with voter suppression.

Today: George Floyd is the most recent of many high profile cases in which black men and women have been killed as a result of either police action or racist hate crimes. The difference today is that everyone now carries a portable video camera in their smart phone. In many cases we see that the official police report falsely describes the incident, which begs the question as to how much systemic discrimination goes uncaptured on video. In many respects it appears that Jim Crow, segregation, and lynching have returned, and indeed are being encouraged, by the Trump administration. But it goes beyond these overt results of discrimination. African American men and women have been disproportionately imprisoned due to unequal laws, enforcement, and sentencing practices. Employment discrimination increases the risk of poverty. Systemic racism, poverty, and injustice has led to significantly higher risks of death and disease. The list goes on.

The brief history above is given to allow people a better understanding of today’s situation. Protests in the streets are not solely because of the death of one man, or even the many men and women who have died under questionable circumstances. The problem is that this has been going on in one form or another for the entire history of the United States, and before. Whether we admit it or not, racism and discrimination are built into our society. It’s systemic. The only way to fix it is to eliminate it from our societal construct. Redlining, voter suppression, politicians stoking fears of “the other”; all are systemic racism.

Given the attitudes and abuses of the Trump administration and Republican Party leadership, the only solution is to vote. Those protesting (and risking their lives given our current COVID pandemic) need to get to the polls. Voter suppression tactics will try to keep minorities, women, the poor, and others from voting, especially in an election where the coronavirus may limit the ability to vote in-person. All of us must vote. Only by eliminating those who encourage racism, both by individuals and the system, can we make the systemic changes that will ensure that all men and women are treated equally.

[Photo Credit: StanleyFormanPhotos.com; Called “The Soiling of Old Glory,” the photo won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize]

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

 

 

Abolitionist John Brown Hanged

John BrownJohn Brown was hanged today, December 2, 1859, just a year before Abraham Lincoln was elected to be the 16th President of the United States. History has a love/hate relationship with John Brown. There were many abolitionists in the antebellum Union. To them not only was slavery wrong, but it must be abolished immediately and for all time. So Brown was not alone in that belief.

But as a radical abolitionist John Brown took this conviction to its extremes. He believed in taking definitive action – including violent action – to erase slavery from this Earth. On this date he was hanged for a raid on the federal armory in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. His goal was to start an armed insurrection. It didn’t work. Abraham Lincoln in his epic Cooper Union Address given in February 1860 put it like this:

John Brown’s effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate.

Harpers Ferry was not the first time John Brown sought to stimulate an uprising. In 1856 he joined with others in attacking a military detachment in the Battle of Black Jack, perhaps one of the first incidents of what came to be known as Bleeding Kansas. Brown then hacked to death five pro-slavery supporters in the town of Pottawatomie, Kansas. So by the time of the failed Harpers Ferry raid John Brown was largely seen as a persona non grata by those who both agreed and disagreed with his views on slavery.

The Smithsonian Museum of American History looks at slavery and John Brown as part of its The Price of Freedom exhibition (Flash needed to view slideshow). In addition, the museum addressed how John Brown should be remembered by history as part of their Time Trial of John Brown. The YouTube video below introduces the series.

Expand the text below the video to find links to the various parts of this fascinating program. So, how should John Brown be remembered? As a violent murderer or as someone who felt the need to abolish slavery merited extreme action?

More on Abraham Lincoln.

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!