Nebraska At The Start of The Civil War
Further information: History of slavery in NebraskaAntebellum Nebraska Territory was a slavery-free region. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 had established the 40th parallel north as the dividing line between the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. It had also repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and allowed settlers in those territories to determine if they would allow slavery within their boundaries. Nebraska residents, many of them migrants from the Northern United States, chose to exclude slavery from their territory.
Anti-secession feelings ran strong in the fledgling Nebraska Territory. Seward County was originally called Greene County, after a popular U.S. Army general from Missouri. But after General Greene joined the Confederacy, the county was renamed Seward for William H. Seward, Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of State.
As the war began in April 1861, Algernon Paddock was serving as the territorial secretary, the highest office. On May 15, Alvin Saunders, a staunch Republican and supporter of President Lincoln, was sworn in as the formal Governor of Nebraska Territory. He served in that capacity throughout the war.
Read more about this topic: Nebraska In The American Civil War
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, nebraska, start, civil and/or war:
“... there was the first Balkan war and the second Balkan war and then there was the first world war. It is extraordinary how having done a thing once you have to do it again, there is the pleasure of coincidence and there is the pleasure of repetition, and so there is the second world war, and in between there was the Abyssinian war and the Spanish civil war.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“What should concern Massachusetts is not the Nebraska Bill, nor the Fugitive Slave Bill, but her own slaveholding and servility. Let the State dissolve her union with the slaveholder.... Let each inhabitant of the State dissolve his union with her, as long as she delays to do her duty.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The almost unexplored Everglades lay close by and with a half- hour’s start a man who knew the country was safe from pursuit. As one man cheerfully confided ..., ‘A boat don’t leave no trail, stranger.’”
—For the State of Florida, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“To the cry of “follow Mormons and prairie dogs and find good land,” Civil War veterans flocked into Nebraska, joining a vast stampede of unemployed workers, tenant farmers, and European immigrants.”
—For the State of Nebraska, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“War ...
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing.”
—Edwin Starr, U.S. soul singer. War (song)