America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. – Abraham Lincoln
Cost of Living -Ten pounds of sugar cost $0.20 -One acre in a tract of land of over 400 acres cost $2.00 -One bushel (35.2 liters) of potatoes cost $0.12 -One set of blue china cost $8.00 -One cow cost $12.00 -One Pound of Coffee Cost $0.17 -One bottle of port cost $0.11 -One piano cost $195 -A routine doctor’s visit cost $2 -A new home in Brooklyn, NY cost $2,500 -A necktie “designed to supersede all other methods for fastening the bow to a turndown collar” cost $0.10 -A dozen pairs of Levi Strauss blue jeans cost $13.50 -One pair of shoes cost $0.98 -One suit cost $10.00 -One opera ticket for “The Marriage of Figaro” cost $1 -One pound of Coffee cost
$0.25 Most professions required a 60 hour work week, which paid anywhere between $1.60 per day (a fireman in Massachusetts) to $4.64 per day (a glassblower in New Jersey.)
Political events The American Civil War ends, President Lincoln dies by an assassin’s hand, and a 12-year era of Reconstruction begins in the South with state legislatures run by “carpetbaggers” and “scalawags.” Union forces under Connecticut-born Brig. Gen. of Volunters Alfred H. (Howe) Terry, 37, capture Fort Fisher at Wilmington, North Carolina, January 15; Union forces occupy Columbia, South Carolina, February 17, and Charleston falls to a Union fleet February 18. President Lincoln delivers his second inaugural address March 4, stating that the nation’s postwar posture should be “with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.” Petersburg, Virginia, surrenders April 3 and Grant takes Richmond the same day with help from local Yankee sympathizer Elizabeth Van Lew, who has brought supplies to imprisoned Union officers and helped many to escape (see 1862). Affecting peculiar dress and behavior in order to divert suspicion, “Crazy Bet” has maintained five relay stations between the Confederate capitol and
“The only difference between methe and a madman “I put the bottle down, winning war important than Jack Daniels” is thatwas I’m more not mad.” – Salvador Dali – Ulysses S. Grant
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Grant’s headquarters. Confederate secretary of state Judah P. Benjamin disguises himself as a clergyman and escapes to the West Indies following the fall of Richmond April 3. Now 54, he sails for England, will be admitted to the bar at London next year, and in 1869 will become Queen’s Counsel. The War of the Rebellion ends April 9 with General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. “Let us have peace,” says General Grant. The 4-year Civil War has cost the country 620,000 lives: the Union has lost 360,222 men (110,000 of them in battle), the Confederacy 258,000 (94,000 in battle), with 471,427 wounded on both sides. Men with missing arms and legs are everywhere to be seen, the nation is full of widows and orphans, and marriageable young women have trouble finding husbands.
Confederate secretary of war John C. Breckenridge flees south with other high-ranking officials, escapes to Cuba, and makes his way to England, where he will remain until 1868, when an amnesty proclamation will permit him to return to Lexington, Kentucky.
“Duty is the most sublime word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more. You should never wish to do less.” – Robert E. Lee
The end of the Civil War makes it possible for President Lincoln to ship arms and clothing across the border to Mexico, where supporters of exiled President Juárez put them to good use against French forces of the emperor Maximilian (see 1864; 1866).
Assassin John Wilke Booth’s alleged conspirators go on trial beginning May 12; all are found guilty, including Mrs. Surratt, and hanged July 7.
Former Confederate president Jefferson Davis is captured at dawn May 10 near Irwinville, Georgia, and placed in leg-irons at Fort Monroe, Virginia, where he is confined in a damp casemate. News of his treatment produces a wave of outrage in the North, and he is transferred to more comfortable quarters, but he will be held under guard until May 1867.
Confederate guerilla leader William C. Quantrill dies in a Louisville, Kentucky, prison June 6 at age 27; The “carpetbaggers” who move into the South are so called with contempt by Southerners, who say that the newcomers can put all they own in the common hand luggage called carpetbags. Some become state legislators and U.S. con-
“Without slavery, the rebellion could never have existed. Without slavery, it could not continue.” – Abraham Lincoln, December 1, 1862, Message to Congresss For advertising information call: (858) 537.2280
March15, 1, 2011 March 2011 THE THE MILITARY MILITARY PRESS PRESS Page Page 23 23
gressmen, some are missionaries sent to help the freedmen, who are helped in some cases also by “scalawags”— Southerners who join with the exslaves to establish a new order in the South.
human rights, social justice News that the war is over and the slaves freed reaches Texas June 19 when a U.S. Army ship arrives at Galveston; the state’s 250,000 slaves were freed in 1863 by the Emancipation Proclamation but Texans never heard about it. Many will celebrate “Juneteenth” in years to come. The Ku Klux Klan organized at Pulaski, Tennessee, is a secret social club
of young men who hope to recapture the comradeship and excitement of the war. Headed by former Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, its name comes from the Greek “Kuklos” meaning circle. Gen. Forrest is its “Grand Wizard.” The group adopts elaborate rituals, and its members soon discover that their curious uniform terrorizes superstitious blacks. A majority of Southern whites will join in the next few years as the KKK tries to return local and state government to white, Democratic Party control, but the Klan will disband in 1869 (see 1915; White Camelia, 1867). The commandant of the Confederate prison camp at Andersonville, Georgia, is convicted of “murder, in violation of the laws and customs of war” and hanged November 10 in Washington’s Old Capitol Prison at the foot of
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Capitol Hill. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution that takes effect December 18 prohibits slavery or any other denial of liberty “without due process of law.” President Lincoln signs a bill April 14 (his final act as president) creating the Secret Service, a branch of the Treasury Department whose mission is to combat counterfeiting of U.S. currency . The first safe-deposit vault opens at New York June 5; depositors pay $1.50 per year for each $1,000 stored in the vault.
science Chemist F. A. Kekulé von Stradonitz explains the structure of aromatic compounds, setting forth a doctrine of the linking of carbon atoms and originating the ring (closed-chain) theory of the benzene molecule’s constitution (see 1858). “A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field” by physicist James Clerk Maxwell unifies laws of electricity and magnetism (see Maxwell, 1859). Light, he concludes, is an electromagnetic wave, but his theory fails to explain why atoms do not lose all
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their energy when they radiate light, a question that will remain unresolved until the development of quantum theory.
medicine Cholera strikes Paris in September, the daily death toll reaches 200, and sulfur is burned to combat the “miasma” in the air that is held responsible despite John Snow’s observations at London in 1853. Louis Pasteur’s infant daughter Camille dies in the epidemic.
everyday life The Stetson “ten-gallon” hat is created by Philadelphia hat maker John Batterson Stetson, 35, whose highcrowned “Boss of the Plains” is a modified Mexican sombrero with a fourinch crown, a four-inch brim that can carry 10 “galions” (ribbons), and a leather strap hatband. The $5 hat has a look of importance and is destined for fame on the Western plains (a Stetson made from better materials will sell for $10, one made from pure beaver or nutria felt for $30). Boston City Hall is completed to designs by architects Gridley J. Fox Bryan and Arthur Gilman. Oregon’s Mount Hood in the Cascade Range erupts for the last time and becomes extinct. Anheuser-Busch has its beginnings at St. Louis, where German-born brewer Adolphus Busch, 26, marries Lily Anheuser and goes into business with her German-born father, Eberhard Anheuser.