Http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/US_Slave_ Free_1789-1861.gif.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/US_Slave_Free_1789-1861.gif

The Ostend Manifesto was a document written in 1854 that described the rationale for the United States to purchase Cuba from Spain while implying that the U.S. should declare war if Spain refused. Cuba’s annexation had long been a goal of U.S. expansionists, particularly as the U.S. set its sights southward following the admission of California to the Union. However, diplomatically, the country had been content to see the island remain in Spanish hands so long as it did not pass to a stronger power such as Britain or France. A product of the debates over slavery in the United States, Manifest Destiny, and the Monroe Doctrine, the Ostend Manifesto proposed a shift in foreign policy, justifying the use of force to seize Cuba in the name of national security – i.e. lest the British would take control of the island, and perhaps set up a black republic.

During the administration of U.S. President Franklin Pierce, Southern expansionists called for Cuba's acquisition as a slave state, but the galvanizing effect of the Kansas-Nebraska Act left the administration unsure of how to proceed.

An 1854 cartoon depicts a giant free soiler being held down by James Buchanan and Lewis Cass standing on the Democratic platform marked “Kansas”, “Cuba” and “Central America” (referring to accusations that southerners wanted to annex areas in Latin America to expand slavery). Franklin Pierce also holds down the giant's beard asStephen A. Douglas shoves a black man down his throat

John Brown (1800-1859)Bleeding Kansas: Free Staters vs. Border Ruffians

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 tore apart the Whig Party and led to the foundation of the Republican Party: northern white Protestants, businessmen, professionals, factory workers, wealthier farmers, and blacks. No presence in the South. In the North, most former Whigs and Free Soil. By 1858 majorities in nearly every Northern state.

With the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, and its success in guiding the Union to victory and abolishing slavery, it came to dominate the national scene until 1932. Pro-business coalition. Supported banks, the gold standard, railroads, and high tariffs to protect heavy industry and the industrial workers.

But in 1932 the GOP (“Grand Old Party”) failed to reverse the Great Depression. Defeated by the New Deal Coalition led by Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt1933-1945. Coalition collapsed in the middle 1960s and Republicans came back, winning seven of the 10 presidential elections 1968 to 2004.

After 1968, the GOP relied on a new base in the white South, among evangelical Protestants. Key late-20th century leader Ronald Reagan: his conservative pro-business policies for less government regulation, lower taxes, and an aggressive foreign policy still dominate the party 

The Democratic-Republican Party led by Thomas Jefferson an Anti-Federalist faction in the early 1790s. Pro states’ rights, adherence to the Constitution, vs. national bank and moneyed interests. In the 1820s the party faction supporting Jeffersonian principles (Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren) founded the Democratic Party. In the 1850s, post Fugitive Slave Law and Kansas-Nebraska Act, anti-slavery Democrats joined the new Republican Party. Democrats benefited from Southerners’ resentment after the war. After violent disenfranchisement of African Americans in 1890s, the South always voted Democratic. (Primaries)After Great Depression Democrats controlled the House of Representatives (1931-1995). New Deal liberalism meant the promotion of social welfare, labor unions, civil rights, and regulation of business. Republicans attracted conservatives and white Southerners from the Democratic coalition: resistance to New Deal and Great Society liberalism. African Americans began supporting Democrats following Civil Rights movement. Historical reversal: Democratic main base of support shifted to the Northeast. Bill Clinton 1992 and 1996, New Democrat. Lost control of Congress in the election of 1994. Won back in 2006, lost in 2010.2010 polling: 31% of Americans identified as Democrats, 29% as Republicans, and 38% as independents.

Abraham Lincoln, Discorso di Gettysburg« Or sono sedici lustri e due anni che i nostri avi costruirono, su questo continente, una nuova nazione, concepita nella Libertà, e votata al principio che tutti gli uomini sono creati uguali. Adesso noi siamo impegnati in una grande guerra civile, la quale proverà se quella nazione, o ogni altra nazione così concepita e così votata, possa a lungo perdurare. Noi ci siamo raccolti su di un gran campo di battaglia di quella guerra. Noi siamo venuti a destinare una parte di quel campo a luogo di ultimo riposo per coloro che qui diedero la vita, perché quella nazione potesse vivere. È del tutto giusto e appropriato che noi compiamo quest’atto. Ma, in un senso più vasto, noi non possiamo inaugurare, non possiamo consacrare, non possiamo santificare questo suolo.

I coraggiosi uomini, vivi e morti, che qui combatterono, lo hanno consacrato al di là del nostro piccolo potere di aggiungere o detrarre. Il mondo noterà appena, né a lungo ricorderà ciò che qui diciamo, ma mai potrà dimenticare ciò ch’essi qui fecero. Sta a noi viventi, piuttosto, il votarci qui al lavoro incompiuto, finora così nobilmente portato avanti da coloro che qui combatterono.Sta piuttosto a noi il votarci qui al gran compito che ci è di fronte: che da questi morti onorati ci venga un’accresciuta devozione a quella causa per la quale essi diedero, della devozione, l’ultima piena misura; che noi qui solennemente si prometta che questi morti non sono morti invano; che questa nazione, guidata da Dio, abbia una rinascita di libertà; e che l’idea di un governo di popolo, dal popolo, per il popolo, non abbia a perire dalla terra. »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4Bojjx_Dew&feature=related

Abraham Lincoln “Gettysburg Address” (November 19, 1863)

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. 

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 battlefield 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 the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. 

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot 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 so nobly advanced. It is 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 the government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

WHO WERE THE RADICAL REPUBLICANS

(Presentazione realizzata dalla Sig.ra Ambra Caserta)

Members of the Republican Party in 1860s committed to the emancipation of slaves and the equal treatment and enfranchisement of blacks.

Zealous antislavery advocates in the Congress pressed Pres. Abraham Lincoln to include emancipation as a war aim.

They later opposed this policy of lenient Reconstruction of the South under presidential control and passed harsher measures in the Wade Davis Bill

Different factions, indeed…Some Republicans had no concern for Blacks, but

wanted to end slavery only because it competed with White labor.

Other Republicans wanted to stop the spread of slavery because they wanted the potential farmland to be used to grow diverse crops (other than cotton).

But there was a minority of Republicans who believed that all human beings are created equal, that we're all God's children, regardless of race, and that slavery should be abolished because it was evil: those were the Radical Republicans.

 After Lincoln’s death the Radicals supported Pres. Andrew Johnson

but soon demanded congressional control of Reconstruction. Johnson’s attempt to break the 

Radicals ’ power led them to pass the Tenure of Office Act; his challenge 

of the act  led to his impeachment.    

 Radical Republicans  leaders  included  Henry Winter Davis; Thaddeus Stevens; Benjamin Butler.

Their influence waned as white control over Southerngovernments gradually  returned in the 1870s.

Abraham Lincoln

"WHENEVER I HEAR ANYONE ARGUING FOR SLAVERY, I FEEL A STRONG IMPULSE TO SEE IT TRIED ON HIM PERSONALLY."—ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Lincoln was born February 12, 1809, in Hodgenville, Kentucky

An attorney and Congressman from Maryland,was considered for Lincoln's first cabinet and had heavy support from New England, his cousin David Davis, Thurlow Weed and William Seward, but lost out to his enemy, Montgomery Blair, who had more favorably impressed Lincoln. Indeed, he had not publicly supported Mr. Lincoln during the 1860 election and was not even a Republican at the time. Davis' political philosophy was largely based on opposition to the Democrats; he was a fervent Whig and Know-Nothing before he finally became a Republican. A combative, volatile and brash chameleon who changed religion with the philosophical winds and parties with the political seasons, Davis became a thorn in President Lincoln's side and a continual antagonist to the Blair family. He began the war as a critic of the Lincoln Administration's abuse of civil liberties of suspected traitors and became an advocate for such policies. Although he had always been anti-slavery, the war also converted him into a fervent radical on slavery questions and advocate of immediate emancipation. He objected to the Emancipation Proclamation because he believed emancipation was a congressional prerogative and because it failed to guarantee the rights of freedmen. As a border state Congressman, however, his pro-Republican votes and anti-Administration politics cost him his seat for two years. He was reelected in 1863 and sided with Radical Republicans.

Henry Winter Davis (1817-1866)

Benjamin Butler

In the history of slave emancipation in the United States, Gen. Benjamin Franklin Butler is an unlikely, but real hero. Civil War Emancipation has already addressed how Butler by declaring slaves “contraband of war” in late May 1861 helped make Union-controlled territory a refuge for escaped slaves and in the process was the first Union official to undermine slavery in a major way.

By asserting that slaves when they were the property of disloyalowner were subject to seizure, Butler provided a legal justification that did not immediately challenge slavery’s legality (politically essential in Spring 1861), but in the long run provided the basis to begin practically speaking to dismantle the peculiar institution.However, as late as April 1861, Ben Butler would have seemed an improbable convert to the anti-slavery cause. A political general from Massachusetts, Butler was a Democrat before the war, going as far as to champion Jefferson Davis as the Democratic presidential nominee in 1860 and supporting John C. Breckenridge, the southern Democratic nominee, after the party split on sectional lines that year. He owed his commission to his support for the war in the wake of Fort Sumter (Lincoln needed “War Democrats” like Butler) and the fact that he was a long-time officer in the Massachusetts militia before the Civil War.

Thaddeus Stevens

He was an innovator who had an unyielding commitment to freedom and equal opportunity for all. He is considered the father of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which ended slavery, extended equal protection to all citizens, and granted all male citizens the right to vote. 

Historians have recognized him as one of the most powerful parliamentarians ever to serve in Congress, and as a man who had more influence on his time than many presidents had on theirs.

The inscription he ordered for his tombstone bears witness to his lifelong quest for freedom and equality:

“I repose in this quiet and secluded spot, Not from any natural preference for solitude But, finding other Cemeteries limited as to Race By Charter Rules, I have chosen this that I might illustrate In my death The Principles which I advocated Through a long life: EQUALITY OF MAN BEFORE HIS CREATOR”