The line between the Rebel and Union element in Georgetown was so marked that it led to divisions even in the churches. There were...

Stanton would not allow himself such leniency. A clerk recalled finding Stanton one night in his office, "the mother, wife, and children of a soldier who had been condemned to be shot as a deserter, on their knees before him pleading for the life of their loved one. He listened standing, in cold and austere silence, and at the end of their heart-breaking sobs and prayers answered briefly that the man must die. The crushed and despairing little family left and Mr. Stanton turn

Grant's entrance into Washington was consistent with him image as an unpretentious man of action, the polar opposite of McClellan. He walked into the Willard Hotel at dusk, accompanied only by his teenage son, Fred. Unrecognized by the desk clerk, he was told that nothing was available except a small room on the top floor. The situation was remedied only when the embarrassed clerk looked at the signature in the register‑‑U. S. Grant and son, Galena, Illinois-and immediately s

At Gettysburg, he would express that same conviction in far more concise and eloquent terms.

At 2 p.m., Lincoln wearily finished with his own reception, returned to his office. Seward and Fred soon joined him, carrying the corrected proclamation in a large portfolio. Not wishing to delay any longer, Lincoln commenced the signing. As the parchment was unrolled before him, he "took a pen, dipped it in ink, moved his hand to the place for the signature," but then, his hand trembling, he stopped and put the pen down.

Seward still believed that offering his hand in peace in the attempt to prevent a civil war was the right judgment. His wife, Frances, profoundly disagreed. The final speech had reached her in Auburn by telegraph hours after it was delivered. She wrote her husband a blistering letter. "Eloquent as your speech was it fails to meet the entire approval of those who love you best," she began. "You are in danger of taking the path which let Daniel Webster to an unhonored grave ten

In the ballots that followed, as daylight gave way to gaslights in the great hall, Lincoln reached a high point of 47 votes, only 4 shy of victory. Nonetheless, the little Trumbull coalition refused to budge, denying Lincoln the necessary majority. Finally, after nine ballots, Lincoln concluded that unless his supporters Douglas Democrats, who had, as expected, switched their allegiance to Matteson, would choose the next senator.

At the time of their journey, three decades of immigration, commercial enterprise, and industrial production had invigorated Northern society, creating thriving cities and towns. The historian Kenneth Stampp well describes how the North of the period "teemed with bustling, restless men and women who believed passionately in 'progress' and equated it with growth and change; the air was filled with the excitement of intellectual ferment and with the schemes of entrepreneurs; an

The presence of the Negro posed a religious problem for his white owner. If the slave should be converted and baptized, would he not have to be released on the ground that it was immoral to enslave a Christian? The matter was taken to the Virginia Assembly which, in 1667, ruled to the satisfaction of slave holders: