Politics
Although winning only 40% of the vote nationwide in 1860, Abraham Lincoln won Indiana's 13 electoral votes with 51.09% of the vote statewide, compared to Stephen Douglas's 42.44%, John Breckenridge's 4.52%, and John Bell's 1.95%.
Due to their location across the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky, the Indiana cities of Jeffersonville, New Albany, and Port Fulton saw increased trade and military activity. Some of this increase was due to Kentucky's desire to stay neutral in the war. In addition, Kentucky was home to many Confederate sympathizers, and bases were needed for Union operations against Confederates in Kentucky. Militarily, it was safer to store war supplies in towns on the north side of the Ohio River. Camp Joe Holt was established between Jeffersonville and New Albany in what is the present-day visitor's center of the Falls of the Ohio State Park in Clarksville, Indiana. Towards the end of the war, Port Fulton was home to the third-largest hospital in the United States, Jefferson General Hospital, which was built on land confiscated from expelled U.S. Senator and Confederate sympathizer Jesse D. Bright.
Read more about this topic: Indiana In The American Civil War
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“The rage for road building is beneficent for America, where vast distance is so main a consideration in our domestic politics and trade, inasmuch as the great political promise of the invention is to hold the Union staunch, whose days already seem numbered by the mere inconvenience of transporting representatives, judges and officers across such tedious distances of land and water.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The politics of the family are the politics of a nation. Just as the authoritarian family is the authoritarian state in microcosm, the democratic family is the best training ground for life in a democracy.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“Finance is a gun. Politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.”
—Mario Puzo, U.S. author, screenwriter, and Francis Ford Coppola, U.S. director, screenwriter. Michael Corleone (Al Pacino)