A Brief History of the United StatesMcMaster, John Bach
History
A Brief History of the United States
McMaster, John Bach
United States -- History
[1] A closely related question was, What shall be done for the negroes set
free by the Emancipation Proclamation? During the war, as the Union armies
occupied more and more of Confederate territory, the number of freedmen
within the lines grew to hundreds of thousands. Many were enlisted as
soldiers, others were settled on abandoned or confiscated lands, and
societies were organized to aid them. In 1865, however, Congress
established the Freedmen's Bureau to care for them. Tracts of confiscated
land were set apart to be granted in forty-acre plots, and the bureau was
to find the negroes work, establish schools for them, and protect them
from injustice.
[2] When the eleven Southern states passed their ordinances of secession,
they claimed to be out of the Union. As to this there were in the North
three different views. (1) Lincoln held that no state could secede; that
the people of the seceding states were insurgents or persons engaged in
rebellion; that when the rebellion was crushed in any state, loyal persons
could again elect senators and representatives, and thus resume their old
relations to the Union. (2) Others held that these states had ceased to
exist; that nothing but their territory remained, and that Congress could
do what it pleased with this territory. (3) Between these extremes were
most of the Republican leaders, who held that these states had lost their
rights under the Constitution, and that only Congress could restore them
to the Union.
[3] Andrew Johnson was born in North Carolina in 1808. He never went to
school, and when ten years old was apprenticed to a tailor. When eighteen,
he went to Tennessee, where he married and was taught to read and write by
his wife. He was a man of ability, was three years alderman and three
years mayor of Greenville, was three times elected a member of the
legislature, six times a member of Congress, and twice governor of
Tennessee. When the war opened, he was a Democratic senator from
Tennessee, and stoutly opposed secession. In 1862 Lincoln made him
military governor of Tennessee. In 1875 he was again elected United States
senator, but died the same year.
[4] Some of these bonds (issued after March, 1863) contained the provision
that they should be paid "in coin." But others (issued in 1862) merely
provided that the interest should be paid in coin. Now, greenbacks were
legal tender for all debts except duties on imports and interest on the
bonds. A demand was therefore made that the early bonds should be paid in
greenbacks; also that all government bonds (which had been exempted from
taxation) should be taxed like other property. This idea was so popular in
Ohio that it was called the "Ohio idea," and its supporters were nicknamed
"Greenbackers." To put an end to this question Congress (1869) provided
that all bonds should be paid in coin.
[5] This Tenure of Office Act was afterward repealed (partly in 1869, and
partly in 1887).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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