3/4/2008:
Abraham Lincoln became President of the United States during one of the most tumultuous times in our nation's history. By 1860, the issue of the expansion of slavery into western territories was threatening to tear the country apart In the three months following the 1860 presidential election, seven southern states seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. This was the situation Abraham Lincoln faced upon taking the oath of office, on this day, March 4, 1861.
Despite rain that morning, a large crowd gathered at the unfinished Capitol Building to hear the new President. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney administered the presidential oath of office. Then Lincoln proceeded with his inaugural address.
Calling for the preservation of the Union, he promised that he would not initiate force nor interfere with slavery in the states in which it already existed. But he also warned that he had a most solemn duty to preserve, protect and defend the United States.
Lincoln ended with these words, “I am loathe to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Despite Lincoln’s conciliatory address, less than six weeks later the first shots of the Civil War were fired.
While North Dakota is seldom associated with the War Between the States, the conflict would nonetheless make its mark on the state’s history.
One of Lincoln’s first acts as president was to appoint Dr. William Jayne, his personal physician in Springfield, as governor of the recently created Dakota Territory. By autumn of 1861, the War Department had authorized the new governor to raise two companies of cavalry for the war effort. While they never left the region, 182 cavalry officers and men of Dakota Territory served as three-year volunteers for the course of the war.
Several hundred Galvanized Yankees, Confederate prisoners who volunteered for the Union Infantry, served out of Dakota Territory during the final year of the conflict, keeping vital transportation and communication lines to the west secure.
Following the close of the Civil War, many Confederate and Union veterans settled in North Dakota including one of Lincoln’s White House bodyguards, Smith Stimmel, who served as president of the territorial council and John L. Colton who founded the town of Burlington in Ward County. These participants of the Civil War, and countless others, left an indelible mark on the state of North Dakota.
Written by Christina Sunwall
Sources:
American Sources of the Library of Congress- http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trt039.html
Cooper, Jerry. Citizens as Soldiers: A History of the North Dakota National Guard (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press; 2005)
Gutenberg Project: Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address- http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/9
The Library of Congress: Lincoln’s First Inauguration- http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/jb/civil/lincoln2_1
Ward County 75th Jubilee, 1961