Monthly Archives: February 2011

On February 28, 1861, Jefferson Davis vetoed the bill that the Montgomery Convention had passed banning Confederate participation in the African slave trade. Davis did not veto the bill because he favored the trade’s resumption. Instead, he was concerned that … Continue reading →

On February 27, 1861, the Washington Convention at the Willard Hotel finally adjourned, its work completed. It left a proposed constitutional amendment for consideration by Congress that it hoped would become the framework of a new sectional compromise.  Its proposed 13th … Continue reading →

Slaveholders were, even in the best of times, a worried group of people. Although they professed to care paternally for their slaves and sometimes even believed their slaves loved them, occasionally their behavior betrayed a deep underlying fear. On February 26, 1861, an … Continue reading →

Yesterday’s Disunion blog in the New York Times has a nice piece by Adam Goodheart exploring slavery as it still existed in Washington, D.C., when Abraham Lincoln arrived there toward the end of February 1861. One of the interesting things Goodheart … Continue reading →

February 24, 1861 was a Sunday. No doubt, many Americans, South and North, attended religious services that day.  One such group of the faithful gathered that February 24 at the Congregational Church in Norfolk, Connecticut, to hear the sermon of the Reverend Joseph Eldridge.  Eldridge’s talk … Continue reading →

On February 23, 1861, the representatives of the Montgomery Convention, meeting to organize the Confederate government, took up the issue of the African slave trade. For years before the secession winter, some pro-slavery activists had advocated re-legalizing the African slave trade which … Continue reading →

Georgia’s “Causes of Secession,” dated  January 29, 1861, is the last of the state justification documents produced during the secession winter to appear in Civil War Emancipation.  Admittedly, Georgia’s secession convention gave reasons in addition to slavery to justify its separation from … Continue reading →

On June 21, 1861, the New York Times published a letter from an unnamed correspondent in Louisville, Kentucky, dated February 12.  In it, the writer discussed the blandishments of the Lower South states seeking to encourage the Blue Grass State … Continue reading →

Today, Civil War Emancipation continues its series of justifications offered by states that left the Union during the secession winter.  Today’s offering is “A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the … Continue reading →

Even as the Washington and Montgomery Conventions carried on with their respective business, another notable gathering started in Richmond, Virginia, on February 13, 1861.  Though Virginia had initiated the D.C. meeting at the Willard Hotel in a last-ditch attempt to … Continue reading →