No aspect of the Civil War, except for the fighting of it, has received as much attention from historians as the political developments that caused the war and shaped its effects. In the decades before and following the war, the second party system collapsed and the third party system began—and, after many controversies and convolutions, it still survives today. A sectional, minority party won the presidency, then struggled to become a national majority party and survived to enjoy great success, even as it and the nation changed. When one region elected the president, the other dissolved the Union rather...

No two Men could have been more alike and more different than Charles Sumner and William Pitt Fessenden. Both were Republican senators from New England. Both rebelled against their previous parties and joined the Republicans. Both chaired key committees where their talents shone—Sumner headed Foreign Relations, with his knowledge of and connections to Europe; Fessenden led Finance, with his cautious and analytical mind. Both could be difficult to deal with: Sumner reveled in his intellectual superiority, and his idealism and self-absorption only grew worse after his caning by Preston Brooks in 1856; Fessenden turned dyspeptic when egos and debate...

In the winter of 1861, Abraham Lincoln sent his first annual message to Congress. Between a lack of military success and what he called “unprecedented political troubles,” he seemed to have little good news to report. Nor did the prose soar with the turns of phrase that glittered in many of Lincoln’s later pronouncements as president. He recited a litany of government actions that would serve as a precursor to one of the most activist administrations, executive and legislative alike, in the nation’s history. He defended the choice of George McClellan as general-in-chief and sought to assuage concerns about how...

“A memorable day,” conservative Republican George Templeton Strong wrote on 6 November 1860, election day. “We do not know yet for what.” Abraham Lincoln knew, telling reporters, “Well, boys, your troubles are over, mine have just begun.” In six years his party had vaulted from sectional opponents to the presidency. Its call for freedom, combined with other planks and a divided opposition, had produced a victory that made Republicans responsible for governing the Union. But first came the winter of Southern secession and Republican discontent. By 4 March 1861, when Lincoln took office, seven states had seceded and formed the...

By the morning after his victory, Abraham Lincoln had made a wish list of Cabinet members based on two key considerations: political ancestry and geography. Senator William Henry Seward of New York, once a Whig, was first. Former Democrat Salmon Chase of Ohio represented radicals; Edward Bates of Missouri, in many ways still a Whig, came from a border state. The next tier of choices was a pastiche: William Dayton of New Jersey, Montgomery Blair of Maryland, Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania, Caleb Smith of Indiana or Norman Judd of Illinois, and Nathaniel Banks of Massachusetts or Gideon Welles of Connecticut...

On 4 March 1861, Abraham Lincoln stood on the Capitol portico and sought to reassure the South of his peaceful intentions. “One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute,” he said. The dispute was more substantial than that, not only between North and South, but within his party. Republicans agreed on the need to confine slavery within its boundaries, but differed on the depths of their opposition to slavery and what their party should do...

On 9 December 1861, as Congress began the first regular session of the war, Senator John P. Hale introduced a resolution. He was the new chair of the Naval Affairs Committee, but the New Hampshire radical found it hard to adapt to the change from being an opposition voice to becoming a power in the majority. His proposal reflected his problem with adapting to the evolving ideology of freedom, union, and power. He asked the Judiciary Committee to examine “the expediency and propriety of abolishing the present Supreme Court … and establishing instead thereof another Supreme Court.” Lyman Trumbull of...

On 26 January 1863, with Union armies mired in the winter muck on the Potomac and the Mississippi, Abraham Lincoln wrote one of his most famous letters. It followed General Joseph Hooker’s appointment to lead the Army of the Potomac. As a corps commander, Hooker had been critical of his superiors, George McClellan and Ambrose Burnside. For this and his anti-slavery views, Hooker won support from congressional radicals who pressured generals, especially McClellan, whose commitment to the party’s interlocking causes of freedom, union, and power seemed lacking. When Lincoln chose Hooker to succeed Burnside, he told him, “I have heard,...

Francis lieber and Thomas Barnett were unlikely compatriots. A legal theorist at Columbia University, Lieber offered radical prescriptions for wartime ailments; Barnett was a government clerk for Secretary of the Interior Caleb Smith, his Whiggish boss, and a friend of S. L. M. Barlow, a Democratic leader and New York lawyer. But their views converged in 1864, Lieber’s in a speech and Barnett’s in a pamphlet, both calling for Abraham Lincoln’s reelection. They also agreed that Democrats had no cause to oppose his reelection, because the party had no reason to exist. “We know of no party in our present...

While thaddeus stevens seemed to embody radical Republicanism, Thomas Ewing was a quintessential conservative. Known for bitter partisanship, blistering comments about colleagues and issues, and power over House Republicans before the title of majority leader existed, Stevens never hid his desire to free slaves and clothe them with economic and political freedom. A former senator and member of two presidential cabinets, Ewing became a conservative Republican. After joining the new party, the aging politicians retained enough Whiggery to support the internal improvements their old party deemed necessary to developing the nation’s economic power. The radical and the conservative endorsed a...

On 4 March 1865, Abraham Lincoln delivered a second inaugural address that has become known for its tone of conciliation and rationalization. The conciliation lay in its conclusion, which began, “With malice toward none; with charity for all”—an effort to find room for all to agree on how to restore the Union. As Phillip Paludan wrote, while Lincoln used the occasion to blame the South for the war, he noted “the responsibilities that Northerners shared and that he and Congress and the wider polity must assume.” By contrast, Lincoln’s leading biographer, David Herbert Donald, described him as absolving himself...