The Senate, a continuing body, was called into special session by President Buchanan, meeting in March 4 to March 28, 1861.[1] The border states and Texas were still represented. Shortly after the Senate session adjourned, Fort Sumter was attacked. The immediate results were to draw four additional states[13] "into the confederacy with their more Southern sisters", and Lincoln called Congress into extraordinary session on July 4, 1861. The Senate confirmed calling forth troops and raising money to suppress rebellion as authorized in the Constitution.
Both Houses then duly met July 4, 1861. Seven states which would send representatives held their state elections for Representative over the months of May to June 1861.[15] Members taking their seats had been elected before the secession crisis, during the formation of the Confederate government, and after Fort Sumter.
Once assembled with a quorum in the House, Congress approved Lincoln's war powers innovations as necessary to preserve the Union.[16] Following the July Federal defeat at First Manassas, the Crittenden Resolution[17] asserted the reason for "the present deplorable civil war." It was meant as an address to the nation, especially to the Border States at a time of U.S. military reverses, when the war support in border state populations was virtually the only thing keeping them in the Union.
Following resignations and expulsions occasioned by the outbreak of the Civil War, five states had some degree of dual representation in the U.S and the C.S. Congresses. Congress accredited Members elected running in these five as Unionist (19), Democratic (6), Constitutional Unionist (1) and Republican (1). All ten Kentucky and all seven Missouri representatives were accepted. The other three states seated four of thirteen representatives from Virginia, three of ten Tennesseans, and two of four from Louisiana.
The Crittenden Resolution declared the civil war "… has been forced upon the country by the disunionists of the southern States…" and it would be carried out for the supremacy of the Constitution and the preservation of the Union, and, that accomplished, "the war ought to cease". Democrats seized on this document, especially its assurances of no conquest or overthrowing domestic institutions (emancipation of slaves).
Congressional policy and military strategy were intertwined. In the first regular March session, Republicans superseded the Crittenden Resolution, removing the prohibition against emancipation of slaves.
In South Carolina, Gen. David Hunter, issued a General Order in early May 1861 freeing all slaves in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. President Lincoln quickly rescinded the order, reserving this "supposed power" to his own discretion if it were indispensable to saving the Union.[20] Later in the same month without directly disobeying Lincoln's prohibition against emancipation, General Benjamin Butler at Fort Monroe Virginia declared slaves escaped into his lines as "contraband of war", that is, forfeit to their rebel owners.[21] On May 24, Congress followed General Butler's lead, and passed the First Confiscation Act in August, freeing slaves used for rebellion.
In Missouri, John C. Frémont, the 1856 Republican nominee for President, exceeded his authority as a General, declaring that all slaves held by rebels within his military district would be freed.[22] Republican majorities in Congress responded on opening day of the December Session. Sen. Lyman Trumbull introduced a bill for confiscation of rebel property and emancipation for their slaves. "Acrimonious debate on confiscation proved a major preoccupation" of Congress.[18] On March 13, 1862, Congress directed the armies of the United States to stop enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act. The next month, the Congress abolished slavery in the District of Columbia with compensation for loyal citizens. An additional Confiscation Act in July declared free all slaves held by citizens in rebellion, but it had no practical effect without addressing where the act would take effect, or how ownership was to be proved.
Lincoln's preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was issued September 22, 1862.[23] It became the principal issue before the public in the mid-term elections that year for the 38th Congress. But Republican majorities in both houses held (see 'Congress as a campaign machine' below), and the Republicans actually increased their majority in the Senate.
On January 1, 1863, the war measure by executive proclamation directed the army and the navy to treat all escaped slaves as free when entering Union lines from territory still in rebellion. The measure would take effect when the escaped slave entered Union lines and loyalty of the previous owner was irrelevant.[25] Congress passed enabling legislation to carry out the Proclamation including "Freedman's Bureau" legislation.[26] The practical effect was a massive internal evacuation of Confederate slave labor, and augmenting Union Army teamsters, railroad crews and infantry for the duration of the Civil War.
All of the above was taken from wikipedia. Also if you notice congress passed the confiscation act which then allowed President Lincoln to declare slaves contraband of war and free them.
With all due respect, who cares what they think? It is a matter of bemused curiosity that brings me back to visit these threads. Call it a character flaw but it amuses me to witness them contorting themselves to tell one whopper after another, and attempt to rearrange the universe such that it might support their delusion.
Sure, there is some small measure of concern that their preposterous revisionism reflects badly upon FreeRepublic or our hosts, but most people smile and shrug off their Peculiar Obsession.
There are adherents to the Lost Cause Mythology, but they are few and far in between. History treats their cause kindly, but does not support them.
To be fair, not all criticism of Lincoln is southern.
Look north to Wisconsin editor, Marcus M. Pomeroy who during the war wrote that Lincoln was “but the fungus from the corrupt womb of bigotry and fanaticism”— a “worse tyrant and more inhuman butcher than has existed since the days of Nero.”
In 1864, Amos Kendall published a series of letters denouncing Lincoln. “Our federal Union,” he declared, “is in more danger this day from Abraham Lincoln and the unprincipled and fanatical faction to whom he has surrendered himself, soul and body, than from all other causes combined.”
The condemnation of Lincoln was not just in the South or North, but international.
The London Times said the United States, under Lincoln's control, had “entered on that transition stage, so well known to the students of history, through which Republics pass on their way from democracy to tyranny.”
Nor is the frank assessment of Lincoln just historical. In the 1980s, author Dwight G. Anderson in his book wrote that Lincoln became the “very tyrant against whom Washington had warned in his Farewell Address, a tyrant who would preside over the destruction of the Constitution in order to gratify his own ambition.”
So, no, criticism of Lincoln is not just southern.