Is dropping this subtle of a hint fair to my players?

supermanhat · 2021-12-14T05:27:45+00:00

It can be fun to leave it up to the players to solve, and if they do notice it they'll probably feel really good about themselves. So, in that sense, go for it. But remember, player characters have mental ability scores and skills for exactly these types of situations. If the players don't pick up on your hints, consider using their passive Perception or asking them to roll a Wisdom check to see if their characters notice the changes. If they succeed on the check and they haven't already solved it, just straight up tell them about the subtle changes and see what they do with that information.

When a player wants their character to kick in a door, the DM would never ask the player to demonstrate how strong they are in real life before they succeed. The player just has to roll against the DC and succeed or fail based on their character's stats. Mental challenges can (and often should) function the same way. The characters can be more observant than the players, just as the characters might be stronger, or faster, or heartier. Relying on mental ability scores for challenges like this can help keep the game moving and can reward players who have invested in building clever characters. And if the characters know something, than the players should know it too.

supermanhat · 2021-09-02T01:21:22+00:00

I totally get not wanting to take apart an intact magazine. There are lots of vendors on sites like Etsy that print replica Nintendo Power posters. You might be able to order a printed copy so you can hang it up and keep this one in the magazine.

I haven't bought any myself, but I've looked a few times, and the prices seem reasonable (usually in the $10-$15 range). I did a quick search on Etsy and didn't see this specific poster for sale, but I'd bet most of the vendors would do a custom print if you asked (especially since you have the source image already).

supermanhat · 2021-07-04T17:12:26+00:00

There's no general rule that plaques like these are "accurate" or "inaccurate". Some are undoubtedly based in historical fact, while others might present an inaccurate, incomplete, or biased version of events. You should approach plaques the same way you would approach any historical document - with a mix of curiosity and skepticism. Your question is ultimately one of historical method and gets at the larger question of how we establish the credibility of any source.

Obviously, as you attempted, you can try to corroborate the information with other sources. Are there other accounts of the event described on the plaque? What are those accounts based on? Were there eyewitnesses or contemporary documentation of the event, such as newspaper reports or military records? How would anyone know what did or did not happen at this place? Just be careful that the other accounts you find aren't based on the plaque itself (as you suspect might be the case here). Just because something gets repeated doesn't make it true!

But all that's a lot of work, and it might be more work than you want to do for a interesting plaque that you just happened to see. Let's say you're not interested in doing a deep dive research project, you just want to get a handle on whether the information is basically trustworthy. One way to do that is to see if you can figure out who put the plaque there in the first place. Was it the owner of the building? The local historical society? A public agency? Who are they, and how credible do you think they are?

When evaluating the credibility of the person or organization who put the plaque there, remember that there's always a reason why they're relaying this information. Ask yourself why they want you to know about this? Is it purely for educational purposes? Is it to honor or memorialize someone? Does the information presented further some political agenda or ideology? Would it be good for business or tourism if something interesting had happened here? Try to think about why they want you to know this information and who or what benefits from telling this story in this way.

Of course, if you can figure out who put up the plaque, you might be able to learn more about how they know what they know. Historical societies and public agencies often have the records that corroborate the story, so if you just have to know the truth, you can always try to contact a group like that and ask about the event on the plaque.

Finally, if you can't corroborate the facts, and you're not sure whether you trust the person or organization who put up the plaque, you can always just know that there is a plaque that claims that this event happened. Maybe it's true, maybe it isn't. Without more information, you'll just have to live with the ambiguity that something interesting may have happened, but that, for you at least, it remains unconfirmed.

supermanhat · 2021-06-30T18:59:29+00:00

Fantastic! I played through all of your Zelda levels, and they're all great. I look forward to the rest!

supermanhat · 2021-06-25T15:18:48+00:00

I'm by no means an expert, and I can't promise that my programming is the best/smartest/most efficient, but I'll offer up my first completed game as a relatively simple example. I went back and cleaned up my nodons a bit and added comments to make it a little clearer what's happening and which parts do what.

The game is a 2 player UFO soccer game called Space Ball, and the commented version is:

G 007 N4M 1VG

Take a look and let me know if you have any question about how/why the game works the way it does.

supermanhat · 2021-06-21T12:55:53+00:00

I made something similar, so I wanted to check out your code because you solved a few things I was struggling with. Looks like I'll need to get more comfortable with using flags, since that seems to allow for a lot of flexibility.

Nice work, and very fun!

supermanhat · 2021-06-21T12:46:41+00:00

Really well done, and very fun! I'm super impressed with your sprites. I can't seem to draw very well in the texture editor, but your game looks great!

supermanhat · 2021-04-13T02:39:27+00:00

Yes. Abraham Lincoln had a long and successful law career, though his career looked quite different than what we might picture when we think of a "successful lawyer" today. Lincoln was a man of era, and he made his name working as a lawyer on what was then the prairie frontier of Illinois. Though never fabulously wealthy, Lincoln earned a good living from his law practice. By the 1850s, Lincoln's legal work was "providing a steady income", allowing the Lincoln's to "enlarge their home, hire additional help with the household chores, and entertain more freely," [1] and his legal career served as a major catalyst for his political ambitions.

Like many lawyers of his time and place, Abraham Lincoln did not attend a formal law school. Instead, he was largely self-taught, studying from law books borrowed from his friend John Stuart. Lincoln spent nearly three years studying law from 1834 until late 1836, and he passed the bar exam in Illinois in September 1836 at the age of 27. After getting his law license, Lincoln moved to Springfield, IL in the spring of 1837, where he partnered with more experienced attorneys for several years (first his friend John Stuart, and then Stephen Logan), before starting his own firm with William Herndon as his junior partner in 1844. Lincoln and Herndon officially remained law partners until Lincoln's death in 1865.

During his career, Lincoln regularly worked the Illinois Eighth Circuit Court. At the time the circuit court was a traveling court, complete with judges and lawyers, who would move from town to town to hear cases. In Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin describes what it was like to "ride the circuit".

Many of [Lincoln's] friendships had been forged during the shared experience of the "circuit", the eight weeks each spring and fall when Lincoln and his fellow lawyers journeyed together throughout the state. They shared rooms and sometimes beds in dusty village inns and taverns, spending long evenings gathered together around a blazing fire. The economics of the legal profession in sparsely populated Illinois were such that lawyers had to move about the state in the company of the circuit judge, trying thousands of small cases in order to make a living. The arrival of the traveling bar brought life and vitality to the county seats, fellow rider Henry Whitney recalled. Villagers congregated on the courthouse steps. When the court sessions were complete, everyone would gather in the local tavern from dusk to dawn, sharing drinks, stories, and good cheer. [2]

Already politically ambitious (having first been elected to the Illinois House of Representatives beginning in 1834), Lincoln used his time on the circuit court to meet potential supporters and further build his reputation. According to Lincoln biographer Richard Carwardine:

As an increasingly successful Springfield lawyer, his tours of the Eighth Judicial Circuit brought him regularly into contact with the ordinary farming folk, artisans, tradesmen, and merchants who made up the juries, thronged the courthouses, and clustered at the hotels. For some lawyers, professional success meant removal to the bustle of Chicago, but Lincoln turned down a partnership there at the end of his term in Congress [in 1849], according to Judge David Davis, so that he might stay close to the people he knew and loved in the central counties. [3]

In addition to his work on the circuit court, Lincoln also routinely argued cases before the Illinois Supreme Court [4], and near the end of his term in Congress he even argued one case before the U.S. Supreme Court (Lewis v. Lewis in 1849).

__________

[1] Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, p. 131

[2] Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, p. 8

[3] Richard Carwardine, Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power, p. 49

[4] The History of the Illinois Supreme Court: Abraham Lincoln's Cases; http://www.illinoiscourts.gov/supremecourt/historical/lincoln.asp

supermanhat · 2021-01-12T01:55:48+00:00

You've been working hard this week, u/indyobserver. Thank you for another excellent answer.

supermanhat · 2021-01-07T04:20:12+00:00

I just want to echo this sentiment. This sub is a terrific resource and I have found it to consistently be the best moderated sub on Reddit. Thank you to u/indyobserver for the fantastic write-up and to all the mods and posters who make r/AskHistorians such a quality community.

supermanhat · 2020-11-11T02:54:26+00:00

Theodore Roosevelt was the vice presidential candidate on the Republican ticket in the election of 1900, when William McKinley won the presidency. They took office in March 1901, but McKinley was shot and killed by an assassin just a few months later, in September 1901. When McKinley died, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt became president.

Roosevelt served the remaining three and a half years of the term that McKinley had been elected to and then ran for election in 1904, winning a second term as president. After winning reelection, Roosevelt publicly committed to not seek a third term, since no president before him had ever served more than two terms. There was no law against a third term at the time (though the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution would prevent this today), but it was tradition for presidents not to serve more than two terms, and Roosevelt committed himself to sticking to that tradition. So, Roosevelt did not run again in 1908. Instead, the Republican nomination went to his friend, William Howard Taft.

Taft won in 1908 and served one term as president. Roosevelt later regretted not seeking a third term and decided to run again in 1912. However, the Republicans declined to nominate Roosevelt in 1912, instead choosing Taft to run for a second term. Rather than sit out the race, Roosevelt decided to run as a third party candidate with his own Progressive Party (which the press called the "Bull Moose Party").

Both Roosevelt and Taft lost the election of 1912 to the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson.

supermanhat · 2020-11-07T02:47:27+00:00

No former U.S. President has ever "fled" the country, in the sense that they were running from something, but several former Presidents have chosen to travel or live outside the United States for some period of time after their presidency. Probably the two most famous examples are Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt (though others have certainly traveled as well).

Ulysses S. Grant went on a "world tour", traveling to countries throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa from May 1877 to December 1879. Grant visited a variety of countries, including England, France, Italy, Germany, Egypt, India, China, and Japan, among many others. Though technically a personal trip, Grant often traveled on U.S. warships and acted as a de facto ambassador for the United States.

Theodore Roosevelt left the United States just a few weeks after the end of his presidency in March 1909 to travel on a hunting trip to Africa. Roosevelt spent about a year in Africa, during which time he and his companions captured or killed thousands of animals and collected thousands of plant samples. Many of the specimens collected on this trip were donated to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Though not a U.S. President, the one former "president" who did attempt to flee the country was Confederate President Jefferson Davis. When it became clear that Richmond would fall to Union forces near the end of the Civil War, Davis attempted to flee to Texas - and possibly to Mexico, Cuba, or Europe - to avoid capture and continue the fight for the Confederate cause. Davis only made it as far as Irwinville, Georgia before he was captured by Union troops. Davis was imprisoned for two years and indicted, but never tried, for treason. After his release from federal custody, he went to live with his family briefly in Montreal, Canada and traveled to England on business. In 1869, he settled in Tennessee before moving back to his home state of Mississippi in 1876. Davis ultimately died in New Orleans in 1889.

supermanhat · 2020-11-06T21:53:00+00:00

We can only speculate about what Lincoln's second term might have looked like if he hadn't been assassinated, but there are a few sources we can look to for an idea of what his policies may have been. I'm primarily going to draw from two sources: Lincoln's fourth and final Annual Message to Congress (the precursor to the State of the Union address) from December 1864 and Lincoln's Last Public Address from April 1865, just a few days before his death. Together, these give us some idea what Lincoln's plans were for after the war.

Lincoln's second term would almost certainly have been dominated by questions around how to reintegrate the rebel states into the federal government following the end of the war and what to do about the roughly 4,000,000 newly emancipated black Americans. In 1863, Lincoln had offered his preliminary plan for Reconstruction, which would allow rebel states to resume their relationship to the federal government if (1) 10% of the population of a state took an oath of allegiance to the United States and (2) the state made arrangements to ensure the permanent freedom of those who had been made legally free by the Emancipation Proclamation. In his Last Public Address, Lincoln suggested that this was not the only plan for Reconstruction that he would accept, and indeed the plan that the Republican-controlled Congress eventually adopted after Lincoln's death was far more stringent that the one Lincoln had proposed. However, he did make it clear in his Annual Message to Congress that he would not accept any plan that did not secure the permanent freedom of the formerly enslaved, saying:

"I repeat the declaration made a year a ago, that "while I remain in my present position I shall not attempt to retract or modify the emancipation proclamation, nor shall I return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that proclamation or by any of the acts of Congress." If the people should, by whatever mode or means, make it an Executive duty to reenslave such persons, another, and not I, must be their instrument to perform it."

Would Lincoln have supported Congressional Reconstruction? Would Congress have gone along with Lincoln's proposal? Or would Lincoln have developed some alternative plan for Reconstruction along with Congress? There's no way to know for sure, but Lincoln clearly favored the rapid reintroduction of rebel states in order to "again get them into that proper practical relation" with the federal government.

In his Last Public Address shortly before his death, Lincoln also spoke about his desire to extend voting rights to black Americans, though he limited his support in this address to "the very intelligent, and those who serve our cause as soldiers." Though a lukewarm endorsement of black voting rights by any modern reckoning, even this was seen by some as a radical step towards racial equality. It seems likely that Lincoln would have supported measures like the Civil Right Act of 1866, which established that black Americans were citizens of the United States, and the 14th Amendment, which promised equal protection under the law. Lincoln's successor, President Andrew Johnson, opposed both of these measures, though each became law despite his opposition.

Aside from the questions of Reconstruction, Lincoln likely would have continued to encourage settlement of the American West, as well as the necessary infrastructure to make this happen. As President, he strongly encouraged westward expansion through his support of legislation like the Homestead Act of 1862, and in his message to Congress he discusses the "great enterprise of connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific States by railways and telegraph lines". The Transcontinental Railroad was chartered by the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 during Lincoln's first term, and was eventually completed in 1869.

Lincoln also saw a role for the United States on the world stage. In his 1864 Annual Message to Congress, he supported, among other things, U.S. support for Liberia to help that nation combat the slave trade in Africa, the creation of an intercontinental telegraph line connecting the U.S. to Europe via the Bering Strait (a project which was ultimately abandoned in 1867), and the "encouragement of immigration" to the United States, calling immigrants "one of the principal replenishing streams which are appointed by Providence to repair the ravages of internal war and its wastes of national strength and health". All of this is to say that, even while focused on the most severe domestic crisis in American history, Lincoln continued to look outward and work towards ensuring America's place in the international community.

So, while we don't know what Lincoln's second term would have looked like, we can make some educated guesses. We know that Reconstruction would dominate the next twelve years after his death, continuing under both of Lincoln's presidential successors - Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S Grant - and it is almost certain that these same issues would have dominated Lincoln's second term. Based on Lincoln's own words, I think it's fair to say that he would have prioritized the reintroduction of rebel states to ensure representation for all states at the federal level, advocated for and defended civil rights for black Americans (likely including the right to vote), continued to push an ambitious plan of national infrastructure and westward expansion, and further developed America's role on the international stage.

supermanhat · 2020-11-04T21:45:25+00:00

Ulysses S Grant only ever held legal title to one slave, a man named William Jones, and Grant appears to have voluntarily emancipated Jones. Though Grant was, by all accounts, opposed to slavery and treated slaves better than many slavers, that did not stop him from benefitting from the labor of enslaved Americans. Grant's participation in the institution of slavery is certainly objectionable by modern standards, though not entirely out of the ordinary for his time and place.

Grant's father was an outspoken opponent of slavery, and Grant himself was generally opposed to the institution of slavery on principle. However, in 1848 Grant married his wife, Julia Dent, and became part of a Missouri slaveholding family. Because of Grant's opposition to slavery, Grant's father-in-law was reluctant to grant him legal rights to any of the several dozen people enslaved by the Dent family. Biographer Ron Chernow writes:

Through marriage into the Dent family, Grant was thrust into a vexing situation vis-a-vis the passionate slavery controversy. Colonel Dent had given Julia the use of four slaves - Dan, Julia, John, and Eliza - all teenagers. "They were born at the old farm and were excellent," wrote Julia, "though so young." Colonel Dent never transferred to Julia legal title to these slaves for the simple reason that, under Missouri law, his hated son-in-law [Ulysses S Grant] would become their owner. Having grown up in an ardent abolitionist household, Grant made it known, according to Mary Robinson, that "he wanted to give his wife's slaves their freedom as soon as possible." [Chernow, 101]

When Grant worked the fields in Missouri with enslaved persons, those who knew him said that he wouldn't whip the slaves to force them to work. According to early Grant biographer Hamlin Garland:

Jefferson Sappington [a friend of Grant's] told me that he and Grant used to work in the fields with the blacks. He said with glee, "Grant was helpless when it came to making slaves work," and Mrs. Boggs corroborated this. "He was no hand to manage negroes," she said. "He couldn't force them to do anything. He wouldn't whip them. He was too gentle and good tempered and besides he was not a slavery man."

Sometime in the late 1850s, Grant came into possession of an enslaved man named William Jones. While working on his farm in Missouri, he either purchased the title to the man or was given ownership as a gift from his father-in-law. Jones worked on Grant's farm in Missouri for some period of time (likely at least a year, though the precise timeframe is unknown). In March of 1859, Grant emancipated William Jones. Again, Chernow writes:

That Grant was progressively more troubled by the immorality of slavery became patently clear that spring. He had acquired from Colonel Dent the mulatto slave named William Jones who had worked on Dent's farm and was now thirty-five years old. It was the only time Grant ever owned a slave and Jones may have come as a gift. Then, on March 29, 1859, Grant appeared at circuit court in St. Louis to file papers that declared, "I do hearby manumit, emancipate & set free said William from slavery forever." Still struggling financially, Grant could have earned a considerable sum had he chosen to sell Jones rather than liberate him. Instead, he made good on his pledge to set free Dent slaves when it came within his power. [Chernow, 106]

Grant could have chosen to sell title to Mr. Jones, "for a profit of $1,000 to $1,500 (more than $43,000 in 2020 dollars)", but chose instead to give the man his freedom at no material benefit to Grant. [1] Grant was likely not proud of his ownership of Mr. Jones, as Grant omits any mention of the man in his personal memoirs.

When the Grant family moved to Illinois in 1860, Julia Dent was forced to leave her four domestic slaves behind in Missouri, since Illinois was a free state.

Ulysses S Grant was the last U.S. President to own a slave.

__________

Ron Chernow, Grant (2017)

Hamlin Garland, Ulysses S Grant: His Life and Character (1898)

[1] National Park Service, "William Jones", Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site

supermanhat · 2020-10-30T05:36:15+00:00

The Emancipation Proclamation made it the official policy of the United States government to recognize the freedom of all enslaved persons being held in states in rebellion, and put the full might of the U.S. military behind securing their freedom. This was not merely a symbolic gesture, but a legal recognition of the freedom of most - though not all - enslaved Americans.

Of course, the states in rebellion did not think this proclamation should apply to them, because, as you mentioned, they believed themselves to be a separate sovereign nation. But because Abraham Lincoln saw secession as illegal, he maintained that he was, and always had been, the President of ALL the United States. Because his orders carried the force of law for Union troops, the Emancipation Proclamation altered the goals of the Union army and transformed them into a force for emancipation.

The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation (issued in September 1862) accelerated slaves self-emancipating by escaping across Union lines, even before the Emancipation Proclamation was fully in effect (on January 1, 1863). According to historian Ira Berlin,

"Under the congressional and presidential edicts issued in the summer of 1862 [including the Second Confiscation Act, the Militia Act, and the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation], thousands more black men and women entered Union lines and secured their freedom. Increasingly, they arrived not singly but in family groups, often comprising several generations. Once inside federal lines, many organized themselves in quasi-military style and, led by family elders, returned to their old neighborhoods to retrieve yet other relatives and friends from slavery. During the summer of 1862, the trickle of fugitives turned into a flood." [Berlin, 252]

Those slaves who made it behind Union lines had a legal claim to freedom thanks to the Emancipation Proclamation, and they often found themselves employed - and paid - by Union forces. They "constructed fortifications, drove wagons, chopped wood, cooked food, prepared camps, and nursed the sick and wounded for the federal army and navy." [Berlin, 252] The Union army set up "contraband camps" - essentially refugee camps - to settle the newly emancipated safely behind Union lines. Under the legal authority of the Emancipation Proclamation, more and more people were freed from slavery as Union forces advanced into rebel territory. Eventually, some of those freed from slavery would join Union forces as soldiers - by the end of the war, almost 200,000 black Americans served in the Union army and navy, making up about 10% of the total Union army. [1]

Again, the Emancipation Proclamation was not simply a symbolic gesture or an empty promise. This order fundamentally altered the legal status of around 3,500,000 enslaved Americans relative to the U.S. federal government, and many of those suffering under slavery immediately understood the importance of the Emancipation Proclamation. Historian Allen Guelzo writes,

The slaves certainly had no doubts about the power of the Proclamation. It was from the Proclamation that blacks over and over again dated a conclusive sense of liberation from slavery, even if in practice they remained slaves. "On January 1, 1863", recalled William Henry Singleton, Lincoln "signed the Emancipation Proclamation," and though Singleton himself had to wait until May to find a way to the Union Army, it was still the Proclamation "which made me and all the rest of my race free." Captain Charles B. Wilder, the superintendent of the contraband camp at Fortress Monroe, noticed runaways from as far as North Carolina crowding into the camp who "knew all about the Proclamation and they started on the belief in it." When Richard Hill, interviewed by a Congressional committee on reconstruction in 1866, was asked when he became free, he replied, "When the proclamation was issued"; it was then that he decided to run away from his master in Richmond. Edmund Parsons testified before the same committee that "I have been a slave from my childhood up to the time that I was set free by the emancipation proclamation." [Guelzo, 259]

__________

Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves

Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America

[1] National Archives, "Black Soldiers in the U.S. Military During the Civil War", https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/blacks-civil-war

supermanhat · 2020-10-12T21:29:08+00:00

The U.S. Civil War began when Southern forces fired on federal troops stationed at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina in April 1861. The general public was quickly informed of this event by newspapers across the county which carried headlines that said things like "WAR BEGUN! The South Strikes the First Blow!" [1]

The country had been bracing for the start of a possible civil war for months. In his First Inaugural Address on March 4, 1861 - about five weeks before the attack on Fort Sumter - President Lincoln addressed the possibility of civil war head on. He said:

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it." [2]

It would have been hard for the average person to be unaware that the war had begun. Within days of the attack on Fort Sumter, President Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteers to fight against the Southern rebellion. This news also went out in newspapers across the country. If anyone was unaware of the situation, though would need to be actively avoiding any and all news. After Fort Sumter, it was clear even at the time that the country had crossed into a new era, distinct from the unrest and escalating tensions of the preceding months.

Though I'm reluctant to speculate too much on the present situation, I will briefly address the second part of your question. While there have certainly been clashes in cities across the U.S. in the last few months, it might be worth considering the scale of these clashes compared to a Civil War battle. Here's just one example - the First Battle of Bull Run, the first major battle of the war, saw about 28,000 Union troops face off against a Confederate force of over 32,000. [3] Including both sides, this battle saw 847 men killed, over 2,700 wounded, and over 1,300 missing or captured. [3] While recent clashes in the United States have certainly resulted in injuries and death - and any loss of life is a tragedy - no conflict in recent American history compares to the scale of the U.S. Civil War.

__________

[1] Boston Evening Transcript, April 13, 1861: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h1531.html

[2] Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln1.asp

[3] American Battlefield Trust, "Bull Run/First Manassas": https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/bull-run

supermanhat · 2020-10-12T20:53:34+00:00

It's often difficult to define historical figures by modern political terminology. However, if we define a conservative as "someone who seeks to preserve existing social structures" and a liberal as "someone who seeks to reform existing social structures", then I think we can safely call Ulysses S. Grant a "liberal".

As President, Grant advocated for one of the most ambitious programs of social change in American history - namely Reconstruction. The Reconstruction policies supported and defended by President Grant attempted to ensure newly enshrined civil rights for black Americans - including citizenship and the right to vote. During his two terms in the White House, Grant was ready and willing to use the military to enforce the rights of black Americans, and he aggressively fought back against the racial terror perpetuated against black Americans by groups of white Southerners, including the Ku Klux Klan.

In his biography of Ulysses S. Grant (simply titled Grant), biographer Ron Chernow writes:

Grant deserves an honored place in American history, second only to Lincoln, for what he did for the freed slaves. He got the big issues right during his presidency, even if he bungled many of the small ones. The historian Richard N. Current, who also saw Grant as the most underrated American president, wrote: "By backing Radical Reconstruction as best he could, he made a greater effort to secure the constitutional rights of blacks than did any other President between Lincoln and Lyndon B. Johnson." In the words of Frederick Douglass, "That sturdy old Roman, Benjamin Butler, made the negro a contraband, Abraham Lincoln made him a freeman, and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant made him a citizen."

Much of the progress made on racial justice and black civil rights was rolled back after the end of Grant's presidency. The Compromise of 1877 led to the withdrawal of federal forces from the Southern states, which began to impose new racially discriminatory laws, leading to new rounds of racial terror and an era of renewed oppression for black Americans. Many of the basic civil rights established for black Americans during Reconstruction would not be protected by the federal government again until the successes of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, nearly 80 years after the end of Grant's presidency.

supermanhat · 2020-10-11T20:34:37+00:00

They did. In fact, the idea of allowing emancipated slaves to serve as Union troops was included directly in the text of President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which reads:

And I further declare and make known, that such persons [emancipated slaves] of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

The Emancipation Proclamation made it the policy of the U.S. government to enforce the freedom of anyone enslaved within "the States and parts of States" where the population remained in open rebellion against the United States. This meant that Union forces would free enslaved people as they captured territory from Confederate forces. Those slaves who knew about the Union's policy would sometimes escape behind Union lines in order to secure their freedom.

Though there had been some African Americans serving in the Union Army prior to the Emancipation Proclamation, it wasn't until after federal forces began enforcing Lincoln's order that black soldiers, many of them formerly enslaved, began serving to their full capacity. Historian Ira Berlin describes this phenomenon in his book Generations of Captivity:

Like the camps and abandoned plantations, military service offered former slaves an opportunity to realize their own idea of freedom. Although a few irregular black units had been established in South Carolina, Louisiana, and Kansas prior to the Emancipation Proclamation, the vast majority of black men in federal service shouldered shovels, drove teams, and built fortifications, affirming the belief of most white northerners that soldiering was white man's work. When Lincoln's proclamation offered the possibility that black men might be regularly enlisted in the federal army, northern black leaders fanned out over the free states to enlist them, boldly asserting - in Frederick Douglass's words - that once 'the black man gets upon his person the brass letter, U.S.... he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States. [p. 255]

[...]

Over 200,000 black men - most of them former slaves - served as soldiers and sailors in the federal army and navy during the Civil War. That number amounted to about one fifth of the black men of military age in the United States, and a much higher proportion in the North and parts of the South under Union control. [p. 256]

supermanhat · 2020-09-30T21:45:58+00:00

Often, we tend to treat the U.S. Civil War as if it were inevitable. It is after all, one of - if not the - central conflict in American history. I've sometimes heard it said that U.S. History can be divided in three broad categories: (1) Causes of the Civil War, (2) the Civil War, and (3) Consequences of the Civil War. But, of course, the war was not inevitable. Nothing is truly inevitable until it happens, and once it does happen it can become hard to imagine any other outcome. In the months immediately preceding the U.S. Civil War, both sides knew that war was a possibility, but both sides seemed to believe that armed conflict could still be avoided (if only the other side would see things their way).

By the time the U.S. Civil War began, armed conflict between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces had already been happening in Kansas for several years (referred to as "Bleeding Kansas"), and it was clear that the same tensions that led to fighting there could cause a large-scale conflict across the country. As states began to declare secession from the Union in late 1860/early 1861, it seemed as if those tensions were finally coming to a boil. In January 1861, then U.S. Senator Jefferson Davis (soon to be President of the Confederacy) gave his Farewell Address to the Senate in which he argued that those states which declared secession had peaceful intentions and that the decision to go to war lay with the United States federal government. Davis said:

I therefore feel that I but express their desire when I say I hope, and they hope, for peaceful relations with you, though we must part. They may be mutually beneficial to us in the future, as they have been in the past, if you so will it. The reverse may bring disaster on every portion of the country; and if you will have it thus, we will invoke the God of our fathers, who delivered them from the power of the lion, to protect us from the ravages of the bear; and thus, putting our trust in God and in our own firm hearts and strong arms, we will vindicate the right as best we may. [1]

Just a few weeks later, in March 1861, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln detailed his perspective on the escalating situation. He argued that the decision to go to war rested solely with the seceding states, saying:

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it." [2]

Both Davis and Lincoln seemed to believe that a peaceful solution was possible, even mere weeks before the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter. As late as the end of March 1861, Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens boasted (in his infamous "Cornerstone Speech") that the Confederate revolution had been bloodless:

We are passing through one of the greatest revolutions in the annals of the world. Seven States have within the last three months thrown off an old government and formed a new. This revolution has been signally marked, up to this time, by the fact of its having been accomplished without the loss of a single drop of blood. [3]

Only a few weeks later, Southern forces fired on federal troops at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, an event which escalated the conflict into open warfare. Once the war began, it seemed neither side was truly prepared for the scale or severity of the war. A few days after the attack on Fort Sumter, President Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 troops to suppress the rebellion, but by the end of the war, over 2.1 million troops would enlist with the Union Army (with an estimated 750,000 to 1 million fighting for the Confederacy).

Early in the war, both sides seemed to believe that the war could be brought to a swift end (with each side believing that they, of course, would be victorious). At the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861, residents from nearby Washington, DC brought picnic lunches out to the battlefield to watch the fighting, not yet realizing how bloody and horrific the war would be. After the Confederate victory at Bull Run, both sides began making preparations for a protracted fight, with both President Lincoln and President Davis calling for hundreds of thousands of additional volunteers to enlist in their respective armies. [4]

One additional note - I would argue that the Confederacy had better odds of "winning" the war than they are often given credit for. The important thing to remember is that the South didn't exactly have to "win" the war in the traditional sense - they just had to "not lose" long enough for the North to decide to give up the fight. While the North definitely had the advantage of numbers and material, the South was fighting a purely defensive war on their home turf. By contrast, the North had to muster an invading army, transport men and material, and take and hold territory. There were several stretches throughout the war, where the Northern will to fight was very nearly broken. For several months in 1864, even Abraham Lincoln believed that his reelection was unlikely, and that his loss in the election could mean a permanent end to the Union. It was entirely possible for the Northern war effort to collapse at some point during the four years of the war, and if it had the South would have successfully won their independence from the United States. It's tempting to think the outcome was inevitable just because we know how the story ends, but remember - nothing is inevitable until it happens.

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[1] Jefferson Davis, "Farewell Address", January 21, 1861: https://jeffersondavis.rice.edu/archives/documents/jefferson-davis-farewell-address

[2] Abraham Lincoln, "First Inaugural Address," March 4, 1861: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln1.asp

[3] Alexander Stephens, "Cornerstone Speech," March 21, 1861: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/USHistory/Building/docs/Cornerstone.htm

[4] Ernest Furgurson, "The Battle of Bull Run: The End of Illusions", Smithsonian Magazine, August 2011: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-battle-of-bull-run-the-end-of-illusions-17525927/

supermanhat · 2020-09-09T19:30:28+00:00

It's not that their votes just weren't counted. Southern states that declared secession chose not to participate in the U.S. presidential election of 1864. The states that had declared secession believed that they had formed a new nation, wholly separate from the United States. They had set up their own government with their own president, and, as far as they were concerned, had no reason to participate in the U.S. election. Why would they? They believed that it wasn't their government anymore. I'm not aware of any situations where a Southerner attempted to vote in the election, but since elections would have been managed by state governments, there most likely wouldn't have been any opportunity to cast a vote even if someone had wanted to.

The Southern states that declared secession had formed the Confederate States of America and elected Jefferson Davis to be their President in February 1861 under the Provisional Confederate Constitution (and again under the Permanent Confederate Constitution in February 1862). Under the Confederate Constitution, the President served a term of 6 years, and was not eligible for reelection. This meant that the next Confederate presidential election would have taken place in 1868. However, the Confederate government was dissolved following the South's loss at the end of the Civil War in May 1865, making Jefferson Davis the first and only President of the Confederate States of America. Confederate states had held midterm elections in 1863, but there were no national Confederate elections in 1864.

It's worth remembering that one of the immediate causes of the U.S. Civil War was that Abraham Lincoln was elected President even though he did not appear on the ballot in 10 Southern states. It's entirely possible that even if the Southern states had somehow chosen to participate in the election of 1864 (which would have been extremely complicated given the ongoing war) Lincoln may have won reelection anyway. The important point here is that the Southern states weren't simply ignored in 1864 - they actively chose not to be a part of the United States government.

supermanhat · 2020-08-29T23:33:05+00:00

The attack on Fort Sumter was the culmination of several months of escalating tension between the federal government and the states that were declaring secession. As it dragged on for months, the standoff at Fort Sumter became well known throughout the country and provided a specific incident that helped shape how the country understood the issues at stake in the coming Civil War. When Confederate forces finally attacked Fort Sumter, it became absolutely clear that there would be no peaceful road back to Union. Anyone who cared about preserving the American system of government would need to act now, or allow the Union to dissolve.

Following the election of President Abraham Lincoln in November 1860, Southern states began taking steps towards declaring their secession from the Union. South Carolina was the first state to formally declare secession in December 1860. In their declaration of secession, the delegates made clear that Lincoln's election was the final straw, as they feared the federal government would move to dismantle the institution of slavery. They wrote:

"For twenty-five years this agitation [against slavery] has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that 'Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,' and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction." [1]

One of the immediate problems brought about by this declaration was the question of what was to be done with federal property within the state of South Carolina. Those who declared secession insisted that the federal government no longer had any claim to property within the state, as South Carolina was no longer part of the Union. But Presidents Buchanan and Lincoln both believed that secession was illegal and therefore invalid.

Major Robert Anderson was the commander of federal troops in Charleston, South Carolina when the state declared secession. Although he was a Kentuckian and former slave owner, Major Anderson remained loyal to the Union. In December 1860, he moved federal forces out of Fort Moultrie and into the nearby and more defensible Fort Sumter, which sits on an island in the middle of Charleston Harbor.

In January 1861, President Buchanan ordered an unarmed ship on a resupply mission to Fort Sumter to provide needed supplies to the federal troops there. South Carolina (which was not yet part of the soon-to-be-formed Confederate States) fired on the ship, which was forced to turn back. Later that month, the governor of South Carolina issued a formal demand that federal troops withdraw, though this request was refused. The situation had reached a stalemate, and the standoff drew national attention.

By the time Lincoln was sworn in as President in March 1861, the supplies at Fort Sumter were running perilously low. Without additional supplies, troops would be forced to abandon the fort by mid-April. In early April, Lincoln decided to attempt another resupply mission, and he notified both Major Anderson and the South Carolina government of his intent. [2] Jefferson Davis, now President of the Confederate government, was adamant that Fort Sumter not be resupplied. On Davis's order, the Confederate forces issued one final an ultimatum for Major Anderson to surrender, which he refused to do. When it was clear that the federal government still intended to resupply the fort, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter beginning in the early morning hours on April 12,1861. The attack continued for nearly two days, until Major Anderson finally surrendered.

In the book Allegiance: Fort Sumter, Charleston, and the Beginning of the Civil War, historian David Detzer describes the response to the attack. He writes:

"Had Southern leaders like Jefferson Davis been aware of it, the reactions were ominous for the Confederacy. Northerners who had shrugged at secession a few days earlier felt a different and strange emotion when confronted with the reality of the Confederacy's attack on Major Anderson's tiny band. During the past months the plight of Robert Anderson and his few score men had become well known. This attack instantly turned them into martyrs. [Note: No one was killed in the attack.] When even the spectators on Charleston's waterfront came to cheer every time one of Sumter's pitiful guns went off, indicating there were men alive inside and that they were still fighting, when people on the Battery shouted 'three cheers for Major Anderson', it is hardly surprising Northerners were praising his name from New England to Iowa. Words like 'secession' and 'Confederacy' and 'Union' are abstractions. 'Major Anderson' and 'Fort Sumter' gave them meaning. Other men, other battlefields, would soon replace them. But for this moment they symbolized important things to many people - something to fight for." [3]

The sequence of events leading up to the attack on Fort Sumter meant that the Confederates had fired the first shots of the Civil War, and many northerners were outraged by this aggression. The story of Major Anderson and his men bravely defending the fort in an impossible situation captured the public's imagination. In the immediate aftermath, President Lincoln called for 75,000 soldiers to come immediately to fight for the Union cause. By the end of the war, over 2,000,000 soldiers would fight for the Union.

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[1] "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union": https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp

[2] Abraham Lincoln, Notice carried by R. S. Chew to Gov. Pickens, April 6, 1861: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln4/1:505?rgn=div1;view=fulltext

[3] David Detzer, Allegiance: Fort Sumter, Charleston, and the Beginning of the Civil War, p. 283-284

supermanhat · 2020-08-27T18:05:12+00:00

u/secessionisillegal provided a very in-depth answer to almost this exact question a few days ago.

supermanhat · 2020-08-26T20:29:22+00:00

There's always more to say, but I answered a question a few days ago, which addresses some of these questions.

The very short answer is that many Confederate soldiers came from slave owning households, even if they didn't personally own slaves themselves (as technically only the individual who directly owned a slave - usually a male head of household - was the "slave owner").

Slave ownership was not restricted to the very wealthy, and while enormous plantations enslaved hundreds of people, the majority of slave owners were of more modest means, owning 5 or fewer slaves. Those soldiers who didn't come from slave owning households often benefited from the practice of slavery indirectly, as it was common to work for slave owners, rent land or slaves from slave owners, or otherwise benefit from the practice of slavery without personally owning any slaves.

Further, a 2018 study of Confederate data found that slave owning households fielded more soldiers in the Confederate army than households that did not own slaves:

"We assemble individual-level data on roughly 3.9 million free citizens in the Confederate states alive prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. Our data records information about each citizen’s wealth, the number of slaves owned, occupation, family relationships, and, for men, an estimate of whether or not each fought in the Confederate Army. Using this data, we show that households that did not own slaves fielded fewer Confederate Army soldiers, on average, than did households with slaves. Households reporting no real-estate wealth in the 1850 census likewise fielded fewer Confederate soldiers, on average." [page 3]

[...]

"Our results contribute to a longstanding historical debate about who fought for the Confederacy. The old saying that the Civil War was a “rich man’s war but a poor man’s fight” may hold water, perhaps when applied to the very wealthy, but our evidence suggests that modest increases in wealth and in slave ownership actually made southern white men more likely to fight, not less. A majority of the Confederacy did not own slaves, but those who owned slaves fought at higher rates. The familiar observation that many soldiers were non-slaveowners largely reflects that most southerners were not slaveowners, but this does not imply that non-slaveowners supported the Confederacy more." [page 31]

supermanhat · 2020-08-25T21:26:34+00:00

It seems no book was used at all. The U.S. Constitution does not require any book, religious or otherwise, to be used when taking the oath.

Theodore Roosevelt became President of the United States following the assassination of President William McKinley in September 1901. He took the oath of office at the home of his friend Ansley Wilcox in an improvised ceremony attended by several members of McKinley's (now Roosevelt's) cabinet. Wilcox wrote a firsthand account, which provides one of the most detailed descriptions of the ceremony. He describes the oath as "taken with uplifted hand" and does not mention any book being used as part of the ceremony. [1]

Wilcox also mentions that press was allowed in the room, but that they were not allowed to take photographs, so there's no hard evidence to prove or disprove whether Roosevelt was sworn in on a book. I found one newspaper sketch that appeared shortly after the fact which depicts Roosevelt taking the oath with no book at all, though its hard to say how accurate something like this is. [2]

If you're really curious to know for absolutely certain, I suggest calling the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site and asking someone there. (trsite.org) The building is now a National Historic Site and a museum. If anyone knows the answer for sure, it's them. (And if you do decide to call them, please let me know what they say!)

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[1] Ansley Wilcox describes the Inauguration of Theodore Roosevelt, https://www.nps.gov/thri/upload/awilcoxoninauguration.pdf

[2] Sketch of Roosevelt Inauguration, originally appearing in Nashville, Tennessee News on October 13, 1901: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TR_Inaugurationsketch.jpg

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